Proposal to adopt Ethics 20/20 Revisions in Tennessee Put Out For Public Comment

Back in August 2012, the ABA House of Delegates approved revisions to the ABA Model Rules proposed by the ABA Ethics 20/20 Commission.  Very few of the proposed revisions included in the ABA Ethics 20/20 package are earth-shaking revisions, as many of them only involve change to language in the Comment accompanying certain rules.

The overall bent of the revisions, however, are to address aspects of the impact that technology has on modern law practice, highlight for lawyers their duty to, at the very least, keep abreast of and be competent regarding the types of technologies they use in their practice, and address a few other issues with good guidance regarding how aspects of globalization and the increased use of outsourcing interact with our ethical obligations.

More than twenty-five states have now adopted all or significant parts of the Ethics 20/20 package of changes.  Most recently Washington state has done this, with its revisions to become effective September 1, 2016.  Here in Tennessee, the TBA has filed a petition proposing adoption of almost all of those rule changes, and our Court has now put the TBA petition out for public comment with a November 17, 2016 comment deadline.  (There is also an Errata that the TBA put out to fix a redlining error made by the stupid Chair of the TBA Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility when it was pointed out that we’d forgotten to pick up some changes to our RPC 5.5 that went into effect back in January 1, 2016.)

In my opinion, the most important, and most helpful, part of the Ethics 20/20 revisions takes place in RPC 1.6 by explicitly acknowledging the need to reconcile the duty of confidentiality with the duty to avoid conflicts of interest and the fact that, in reality, this means that lawyers need to be able to disclose some otherwise confidential information when looking at moving law firms or when firms are looking at proposed mergers in order to make sure to identify and address potential conflicts of interest under RPC 1.7.

The Tennessee proposed revisions would pick that change up.  Thus, if adopted, like the ABA Model, our RPC 1.6(b)(6) would now provide an exception to RPC 1.6(a) confidentilaity:

(6) to detect and resolve conflicts of interest arising from the lawyer’s change of employment or from changes in the composition or ownership of a firm, but only if the revealed information would not compromise the attorney-client privilege or otherwise prejudice the client.

If adopted, the TBA’s proposed revisions would also move the language about duties of safeguarding confidential information from the Comment to RPC 1.6 up into the black-letter of the rule itself.  Although our version of that rule would be place into a new RPC 1.6(d), instead of Rule 1.6(c) as in the ABA Model Rules because we already have a RPC 1.6(c) that deviates from the ABA Model Rules approach by imposing certain duties of mandatory disclosure of confidential information.

What we do not propose to pick up, however, are certain aspects of the Ethics 20/20 changes that were made to ABA Model Rule 4.4.  This is because, in Tennessee, we have a more robustly detailed version of  the rule that specifically addresses the duties of lawyers when they receive confidential information that they know or should reasonably know was inadvertently transmitted to them or that they know or should reasonably know was provided to them by someone not authorized to have the information in the first place.

Based on the November 2016 comment deadline, there is reason to be hopeful that these proposed revisions might become effective in Tennessee as early as January 1, 2017.  But, stay tuned.