Categories
. Legal ethics

Arkansas and Wisconsin weigh in on client files in different ways and on different sides.

The need for clarity with respect to what makes up the “client file” has been an issue I have tried to stay up to date on dating back to our unsuccessful efforts back in 2009 to convince the Tennessee Supreme Court to adopt a rule – what would have been RPC 1.19 — to address […]

Categories
. Legal ethics

Fixing a bad ethics opinion – Kudos to the TN BPR!

Late in 2015, the Tennessee Board of Professional Responsibility issued Formal Ethics Opinion 2015-F-160 addressing issues regarding retention of client files.  I wrote here about a significant problem with the part of the opinion that indicated that our RPC 1.15(b) required retention of all client files for a five-year period.  The problem, to me, was […]

Categories
. Legal ethics

TN issues formal ethics opinion on client files that’s bad in a very sneaky way.

Many moons ago at this point, I wrote a post here with some criticism about ABA Formal Ethics Opinion 471  and the various questions important to client file issues on which it punted.  Back then I also wrote about how our effort in Tennessee to get an ethics rule adopted (it would have RPC 1.19 in […]

Categories
. Legal ethics

New ABA Formal Ethics Opinion Avoids As Many (or More) Questions Than It Answers Actually

Several years ago, we attempted in Tennessee to have our Court adopt an ethics rule that would specifically address what constituted client file materials. The effort was unsuccessful despite the fact that the rule we proposed was a strong, well-written rule. The primary reason we were unsuccessful was (as you’ll decipher from pages 24-25 of the […]