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Chicago Federal Criminal Lawyer Michael Leonard discusses new ABA Ethics Opinion 514

by | Jan 12, 2025 | Firm News

Chicago Federal Criminal Lawyer Michael Leonard discusses new ABA Ethics Opinion 514. On January 8, 2025, the Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility of the American Bar Association issued an Ethics Opinion. It is designated as Opinion 514.

As a trial lawyer, and one who sometimes represents corporations, or more often, the individual employees of a corporation or organization, Opinion 514 is not particularly ground-breaking. A core issue that often arises when an outside attorney is representing a corporation or organization is that he/she is NOT also representing the interests of the individual employees. Therefore, in short, the attorney does NOT have an attorney-client relationship with the individual employees of the corporation or organization. The attorney has always had a duty to make that clear to the individual employees, including the fact that he/she is not and cannot provide legal advice to those individual employees. Indeed, the individual employees may choose not to cooperate with the lawyer as a result, or to seek their own counsel before doing so.

In any event, Opinion 514 references the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct. In particular, Opinion 514 cites to Rule 1.4. That Rule provides a standard for competent representation by counsel, including what communications by a lawyer are necessary and required. Opinion 514 essentially encourages attorneys to not only advise individual employees/representatives about the lawyer’s role – early on – but to continue to do so often during the course of the relationship.

Opinion 5.14 states that, “[W]hen an organization’s lawyer provides advice to the organization about proposed conduct that may have legal implications for individual constituents, the constituents through whom the lawyer conveys advice may misperceive the lawyer’s role and mistakenly believe that they can rely personally on the lawyer’s advice.”

Opinion 514 cites to Rules 4.1, 4.3 and 1.13(f), Those Rules require a lawyer for a corporation or organization to engage in reasonable measures to avoid or dispel constituents’ misunderstandings about the lawyer’s role.

Michael Leonard

Leonard Trial Lawyers

January 13, 2025