New ABA Ethics Opinion on Clients with decision making limitations (formerly known as clients with diminished capacity) under Rule 1.14

The ABA Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility recently released a new ethics opinion (number 525) on the recently amended Rule 1.14 on the duties owed to clients with decision making limitations."  You can download a copy here.  The abstract reads as follows: 

A lawyer who determines that his client has decision-making limitations is obligated under Rule 1.14 to maintain an ordinary client-lawyer relationship insofar as possible, and lawyers owe clients with decision-making limitations the same obligations as any other client, including abiding by the client’s decisions regarding the objectives of the representation. In certain situations, lawyers may take protective action to prevent substantial injury to clients with decision-making limitations. In taking protective action, a lawyer may disclose protected information, but only to the extent reasonably necessary to prevent substantial injury to the client. While the recommendation of a guardianship may be an appropriate protective action in certain limited circumstances, the appointment of a guardian is a serious deprivation of the client’s rights and should not be pursued if other, less drastic, solutions are available. Although a lawyer may recommend or support the appointment of someone the lawyer reasonably believes would be a fit guardian, a lawyer whose client has decision-making limitations may not represent a third-party petitioning for a guardianship over the lawyer’s client. A lawyer representing a client with decision-making limitations may withdraw in accordance with Model Rule 1.16. 

 

A guide to advertising rules

LexBlog Publishing has published a long review/survey of the rules regarding lawyer advertising with links to the rule in every state.  If you are doing research on the subject, go check it out.  You can find it here.

Florida Bar Hides From Ethical Responsibilities

 Over at Above the Law, Joe Patrice has published a short post worth reading called Florida Bar Hides From Ethical Responsibilities, Shrugs As DHS Lawyer Compares Federal Judges To Murderers And Rapists.  You can find it here.  In it, he reminds us that 

When the Florida Bar didn’t want to perform the most basic of its duties as the state’s designated professional licensing authority, it invented a new rule out of whole cloth to justify punting a detailed ethics complaint about then-Attorney General Pam Bondi. The entity charged with maintaining the integrity of the Florida legal profession couldn’t even consider the complaint against Bondi because it cannot investigate a sitting officer appointed under the U.S. Constitution while in office.

More importantly, that even though over 120 scholars, practitioners, and former judges wrote to remind the Florida Bar that since Bondi left office their reasoning does not bar taking on the complaint, the Florida Bar has ignored it.  And now, the Florida Bar has used the same reasoning to refuse to investigate DHS General Counsel James Percival.

Patrice argues, and I agree, that 

If the profession is to survive this administration, licensing authorities need to get serious about sanctioning and disbarring these people. These are not close ethical calls. This is the exact behavior that we created professional discipline to punish, and every time a licensing authority looks the other way it undermines the rule of law and its own credibility.