Nebraska brings us … this.

It’s been something of a big month for Nebraska. First, thanks to its divided approach to providing electoral votes, it is contributing one of the electors totaling up to President-Elect Joe Biden’s 306 electoral votes. Second, like everywhere else in the United States (my state is doing just as bad if not worse) unfortunately, it has seen its COVID-19 numbers surge in November.

Third, and relevant to this space, it has issued an ethics opinion of note. It deserves a bit of discussion because it takes what could be a very interesting topic – one I have counseled people through in the past – and manages to make it not interesting at all. Moreover, it effectively avoids addressing the core issue on which lawyers actually need guidance.

The opinion in question – Nebraska Ethics Advisory Opinion for Lawyers 20-02 – offers an answer to the following question:

May a person/entity or group of defendants who are parties to pending litigation in a district court lawsuit brought by a plaintiff who is a trustee of a trust recommend a list of attorneys and pay for the non-party trust beneficiaries’ legal services needed to bring a county court action to
remove the trustee?

Ultimately, it only sort of answers that question because it points out that it can only give advice to lawyers and not litigants and so, instead, really just provides a refresher on the ethical obligations that a lawyer generally is going to have when they get retained to represent one person, but some other person is paying their bills.

Which is fine. But the world has a pretty good amount of guidance on that topic already. Given the actual question, this kind of ethics opinion would have been a tailor-made opportunity to address the ethics of being a lawyer who has a client who wants you the lawyer to help them secure a lawyer for someone else because the client thinks it is in the client’s best interest for that person to be represented by a lawyer.

One way the issue can come up is when a company wants to hook up a former employee with counsel. Wrestling through the ethics issues for the lawyer in that situation can be tricky as much of the analysis can turn on who came up with the idea and why they want to pursue it.

The closest that the Nebraska opinion comes to providing any sort of pointer toward guidance relevant to those questions is where it explains:

To the extent the question presented can be framed as whether the lawyer representing the litigants can recommend the hiring of another
lawyer, the Committee believes §3-508.4 applies. “It is professional misconduct for a lawyer to: (a) violate or attempt to violate the Rules of Professional Conduct, knowingly assist or induce another to do so, or do so through the acts of another.” As long as the lawyer representing the
defendants in the lawsuit brought by the trustee does not induce another lawyer to violate the ethics rules, the defendants’ lawyer has not committed an ethics violation.

Nebraska’s version of RPC 8.4(a) is patterned after the ABA Model Rule version and, thus, that can be a generally helpful pointer. But there are other risks floating around for the lawyer, even if it is their client who truly, independently came up with the idea of trying to hire a lawyer for their former employee.

One risk for the lawyer is if what is motivating the client is a desire to make the former employee “off limits” from informal communications with the opposing party because of the application of RPC 4.2. If that is in the mix, the lawyer may have to be concerned about whether the client is trying to get the lawyer to circumvent the prohibition in RPC 3.4(f) regarding requesting someone to voluntarily refrain from giving relevant information to another party. Lining up and paying for counsel for a former employee is always a safer proposition if what has prompted the idea is that the deposition of the former employee has been noticed.

Another risk for the lawyer (actually two different risks) is if the client wants the lawyer to also take on the former employee as a client rather than hire a different lawyer for that former employee. In addition to the conflicts issues the lawyer has to muddle through about that idea, if the lawyer is the one that is going to be foisted upon the former employee as a proffered free-of-charge counsel, then the lawyer also has to worry about application of the jurisdiction’s rules on solicitation of potential clients. Navigating that path very much drives home the point of the risk associated with RPC 8.4(a) – and not with respect to inducing some other lawyer to violate the ethics rules as the Nebraska opinion briefly mentions – but with respect to violating the rules “through the acts of another.”

And, at each stage, an additional ethics rule lurks in the background – RPC 1.2(d). That’s the rule that simultaneously prohibits lawyers from assisting clients in criminal or fraudulent conduct while attempting to make clear that lawyers are entitled to advise clients about all of their legal rights and the consequences of certain actions. In this context, it is the rule that means that if the client is the one that comes up with the idea, then the client may well be entitled to hear from their lawyer whether they have the right to try to make counsel available at no charge to a former employee and have a “discuss[ion of] the legal consequences” of that proposed course of conduct.

An ethics opinion offering guidance to lawyers navigating that kind of situation would be something that – if done right – lawyers in Nebraska and elsewhere would likely have found to be very helpful.

So, my question, dear readers, is this: does anyone out there know if a state has issued any kind of guidance like that? Hit me up and let me know if there is.