I’m pleased to report that, yesterday, a joint petition was filed by the Tennessee Bar Association and the Tennessee Board of Professional Responsibility asking the Tennessee Supreme Court to adopt an RPC 8.4(g) patterned after the ABA Model Rule.
As I’ve written here in the past, I’ve long been hopeful (not necessarily optimistic but certainly hopeful) that states like mine would take action to enshrine a prohibition on harassment and discrimination into our ethics rules.
You can read the petition filed yesterday by clicking on this link: (filed_tsc_rule_8_rpc_8.4_g .) As you’ll see, in my capacity as Chair of the TBA Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility, I am one of the signatories on the petition. I am certain that there will be some public comments filed in opposition to the petition, but I’d like to think that the fact that both the TBA and the BPR are behind this effort will make it more viable for the Court to grant the petition even in the face of some opposition.
More importantly, as a matter of principle, I think the petition is one that should be granted because the proposed rule is a good and necessary one.
We’ve made some very good additional revisions to the ABA Model Rule in our drafting process — additional revisions that even more clearly help delineate that the kind of conduct prohibited by this proposed rule is conduct that has no place in our profession but does not go so far as to infringe on important First Amendment rights of lawyers.
We made two prominent, and I think important, revisions in the new comment paragraphs that would elaborate on the new (g) provision. Exhibit B to the petition offers a redline showing how what we have proposed differs from the language of the ABA Model Rule, but I will lay them out here because of the significance.
First, we have added the following final sentence to Comment [4]:
Legitimate advocacy protected by Section (g) includes advocacy in any conduct related to the practice of the law, including circumstances where a lawyer is not representing a client and outside traditional settings where a lawyer act as an advocate, such as litigation.
Second, we have added a Comment [4a] not found in the Model Rule, that provides:
Section (g) does not restrict any speech or conduct not related to the practice of law, including speech or conduct protected by the First Amendment. Thus, a lawyer’s speech or conduct unrelated to the practice of law cannot violate this Section.
I anticipate that our Court will likely put this proposed rule change out for public comment before the end of the year.