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. Legal ethics

Coming to praise rather than bury: NYC Bar Op. 2017-6

About two weeks ago, I had the opportunity to speak to the Tennessee Defense Lawyers Association for an hour on ethics issues, using a “hot topic” format.

One of the topics I covered was the many things there are beyond just being parties on opposite sides of the “v” in litigation that present conflicts to be managed, avoided, and addressed in handling lawsuits.

I mentioned the difficult situations that can arise as a case evolves and someone shows up on the radar screen as an important witness — particularly an expert witness — and the importance of running supplemental conflicts checks to make sure that a lawyer or her firm doesn’t first figure out the problem when learning during the deposition that the witness claims to be a client of the lawyer’s firm.  That is a scenario that lawyers sometimes don’t always think about in advance but for which there is little, if any, push back on the idea that it is a conflict about which to be concerned.

I pivoted from that topic to a similar topic — issuing subpoenas for documents to witnesses — that lawyers are more inclined to want to try to intellectualize as not creating a conflict situation because it can have the feel of a “routine” act and it also “feels” like an administrative hassle.

At the time of that presentation, I somehow had not yet seen a recent Formal Ethics Opinion out of the New York City Bar on that very topic – if I had seen it I certainly would have pointed to it — because it is a very well done treatment of the issue.  The question addressed in NYC 2017-6 is:

What ethical restrictions apply when a party’s lawyer in a civil lawsuit issues a subpoena to another current client or may need to do so?

Now, a word before delving into the insight that can be gleaned by all lawyers in all jurisdictions from this opinion about an important, but not dispositive, difference in the language of New York’s Rule 1.7(a).

In Tennessee, and many other jurisdictions with rules patterned after the ABA Model Rules, RPC 1.7(a) reads so as to address two types of conflicts as being “concurrent conflicts of interest.” One where the lawyer would be required to represent one client in matter directly adverse to the interests of another client, and one where the lawyer’s duties to someone else (or the lawyer’s own personal interests) will impose a “material limitation” on the lawyer’s ability to represent the client.

The NY version of Rule 1.7(a) has slightly different language on each of those two fronts.  NY’s 1.7(a) indicates that a lawyer has a conflict:

if a reasonable lawyer would conclude that either (1) the representation will involve the lawyer in representing differing interests; or (2) there is a significant risk that the lawyer’s professional judgment on behalf of a client will be adversely affected by the lawyer’s own financial, business, property or other personal interests.

And, “differing interests” is specifically defined in NY’s rules to mean “every interest that will adversely affect either the judgment or the loyalty of a lawyer to a client, whether it be a conflicting, inconsistent, diverse, or other interest.”  Now those NY variations on the language make it a bit easier and cleaner to see the issues created when a lawyer pursues a subpoena for records from one client for another client but so much of the opinion that explains the analysis is written not just well, but in a practical fashion that, in my opinion, allows it to resonate for lawyers in jurisdictions with the ABA Model Rule language on conflicts as well.

After surveying the landscape of earlier opinions on these subjects, the NYC opinion laid out a number of helpful conclusions:

First, issuing a subpoena to a current client to obtain testimony from that client will ordinarily give rise to a conflict of interest.  Obtaining testimony typically inconveniences the witness, involves probing a witness’ recollection, and at times may involve challenging and confronting the witness, any of which a current client may reasonably perceive to be disloyal.

[snip]

Second, it will ordinarily be a conflict of interest for a lawyer to seek to obtain documents via a subpoena to a current client.  The production of documents in response to a subpoena very often requires an allocation of resources (time and money) which the subpoenaed party would prefer not to expend.  This is all the more so when outside counsel needs to be retained, and the scope of production needs to be negotiated.

[snip]

The opinion then goes on to offer some further practical advice for lawyers to keep in mind because of their ethical obligations which the opinions lays out as:

(a) the necessity for lawyers to run conflict checks prior to serving a subpoena; (b) the potential need to decline or limit a representation, or to obtain informed consent, if a lawyer knows before being retained that subpoenaing a current client may be necessary; and (c) the retention of “conflicts counsel” to avoid the need to withdraw, or the risk of disqualification, when a lawyer learns during the course of a litigation of the need to subpoena another current client.

The opinion does go on to provide helpful explanatory details for each of those topics, and you can go read the opinion in full at this link.