New ethics rules for lawyers will be coming at Illinois legal practitioners at the beginning of next year or 01/01/10. For all our wise-guy readers; yes, lawyers have to be ethical. We also feel the frenetic Democrat-led Illinois Supreme Court will keep us jumping.
Editor’s comment: If you are a busy claims rep or HR person, you may want to skip this article and go to the next one. For the lawyers who read this, following the continuing legal education requirements issued in the last several years by our highest court, we are confident they will continue to throw more and more stuff at already harried legal practitioners.
When it comes to ethics, we have the Big Three–three easy guidelines we teach all the law students who attend our workers’ compensation law course.
- Don’t steal money from your clients. This concept is a no-brainer and includes commingling client money with your money;
- Don’t be a jerk to anyone—swearing and rude actions will always and should always come back to bite a lawyer;
- Keep track of your cases/files and keep them up to date—this protects you from your clients and insures you have malpractice coverage when you can demonstrate due diligence.
Beyond the simple and patent ethics Big Three above, there are details and issues to consider, like not directly contacting your opponent’s client without their advanced consent/permission.
New rules
The Supreme Court ethics rules will cover conduct to include a lawyer’s allowable relationship with a client, advertising by e-mail and buying and selling law firms or practices. Lawyers who learn of wrongful corporate conduct will have new responsibilities to disclose what has been felt to be confidential information to prevent client fraud.
Criminal prosecutors will have new responsibilities and will have to make reasonable efforts to assure an accused has been advised of his right to counsel and has been given a reasonable opportunity to obtain a lawyer.
Precautions will have to be taken when issuing a subpoena to another lawyer to gather information about the lawyer’s past or present client.
Legal observers note these rules simply reinforce current rules and seek to put them into a more readily understood format.
The new ethics rules adopted by the Illinois Supreme Court will also contain a number of guidelines that haven’t appeared in any previously enacted code. They include:
- A rule describing duties lawyers owe to a prospective client arising from preliminary discussions before a formal lawyer-client relationship.
- A rule defining the duties of a lawyer who serves as a third-party neutral, such as a mediator or arbitrator.
- A rule describing the duties of an advocate in a non-courtroom proceeding, such as before a legislative body or an administrative agency.
- Rules addressing how a lawyer should respond when he/she receives a document that was inadvertently directed to you. This rule follows an ABA guideline and is the reason KC&A doesn’t use typical “letterhead” for correspondence any more.
If you have questions, comments or thoughts on these rules, please send a reply.
