I’ve lived in Memphis since 5th grade at this point, but I was actually born in Pennsylvania. I’ll heed all the guidance making the rounds of social media about not sharing information that might be a security question somewhere and won’t tell you what city.
But a part of my heart will always be in Pennsylvania since part of me really grew up there. It’s also the reason why my sporting allegiances beyond the Memphis Grizzlies and Chelsea Football Club all involve Pittsburgh teams.
So, I feel somewhat proud that the Pennsylvania State Bar seems to be the first bar to put out a truly comprehensive ethics opinion attempting to give guidance to lawyers and law firms about their ongoing ethical duties during the pandemic and in dealing with the “new normal” of working remotely from home.
While typically Pennsylvania ethics opinions have been hard to get access to some times because they have historically restricted them, Bob Ambrogi seems to have gotten his hands on the full opinion in digital format, so I’m linking to it as his site here.
It is quite good and really quite thorough (and you probably have some time on your hands), so I’d encourage you to read the whole thing. It addresses a number of rules, including Pennsylvania’s version of the ethics rules on competence and supervising non-lawyer assistants.
I only want to highlight two things that it specifically addresses and one thing that it, unfortunately, does not say at all.
First, I think this is the first ethics opinion from any lawyer regulatory body that comes out so clearly to call out what happens with smart speakers and other “always on” listening devices. It links to a vox.com article to allege that Amazon’s Alexa device and the Google Home speaker actually do have people reviewing the recordings of what those devices pick up and encourages lawyers (and people who work for lawyers and law firms) to not have client conversations in rooms where those always listening devices are located. I cannot remember for certain and have run out of the mental bandwidth today to go searching but I think I’ve written before about how the epiphany is obvious once you have it that the only way such devices can recognize when you call out their name for assistance is that they have to be “listening” before their name is uttered, but your view of such items profoundly changes once you have the epiphany. For what it is worth, I’ve been doggedly adhering to this by trying to have all of my calls take place in one of two places in my house (and on my second-floor balcony) where such devices are not located. And, yet, there’s still my iPhone and Siri which presumably also is a vigilant digital assistant just waiting for me to say her name.
Second, I feel a little personally attacked by the guidance that is stressed about only going to websites that are “secure” in that they have the https: designation. You might notice that this blog is not such a site but also I don’t ask you for any information or try to sell you any products here, so please keep coming around.
And, finally, the one thing that the opinion does not say that I really wish it would have done is this: Pennsylvania’s rules, like Tennessee’s and most others, contain language in the Preamble/Scope to stress that the ethics rules are rules of reason and should be construed as such.
All of the guidance in the opinion is very good and particularly offers a very good clearinghouse of things that lawyers should be trying to do, if at all possible. At the same time though, given how difficult all of this is we should not be sending messages to the profession that we are going to make perfect the enemy of the good.
During these difficult times, my hope will be that mistakes that lawyers may make with respect to the confidentiality and safeguarding of information will be treated as fodder for disciplinary proceedings only in instances of truly reckless or grossly negligent conduct and not mere negligence caused from trying to accomplish what client’s need to get accomplished in circumstances of a prolonged emergency.
That, to me, is a highly practical but entirely timely application of what the rules mean when they say they are rules of reason. Along those lines, while not guidance from a state bar or regulatory entity itself, I also commend for your reading a piece put out by the Holland & Knight law firm that ultimately grabs the spirit of that aspect of the ethics rules to analyze some guidance that can be found in the Restatement of the Law Governing Lawyers.