Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Florida State University Law Review

Abstract

Another category of rule might be called the Danger Zone Rules (DZRs). These rules do not so much forbid bad conduct, but rather describe situations that could lead to bad conduct. Those situations comprise a danger zone that lawyers are forbidden to occupy, either at all or without a client's informed agreement. DZRs are of two types..One type is matter-specific. It focuses on particular clients and matters or on particular kinds of transactions between lawyer and client. Let's call these Matter Danger Zone Rules (MDZRs). Another type of a Danger Zone Rule, the type I wish to discuss here, focuses on the lawyer's practice situation. Let's call this type a Practice Danger Zone Rule (PDZR). A PDZR says nothing about a particular matter that a lawyer may wish to accept, or about a particular kind of transaction between a lawyer and a client. A PDZR tells lawyers they may not practice in certain kinds of entities or alliances because of the danger that the practice situation itself will exert a baleful influence on the lawyer's conduct in matters that the lawyer would otherwise be fully free to accept in a more traditional practice situation. In other words, these are matters, we may presume, that are not forbidden to the lawyer by a BCR or a MDZR.17 The PDZRs lock in without regard to the matters the lawyer may be asked to handle, and need not be known when the rules are violated. So, lawyers may not divide legal fees with a lay person, work at a forprofit entity that is not a law firm if it resells the lawyer's services to third parties, or admit nonlawyers as partners or shareholders of a law firm.18 Each of these three practice situations is said to create a danger irrespective of the matters on which the lawyer may work. What is that danger? It is nothing less than the bad influence by the lay participant. 9 Or, more accurately, it is the risk of bad influence because, surely, not all lay persons will try to tempt a lawyer to act badly, and, if we are being honest about it, I think we must admit that the great majority will not. So let us say that these rules exist because of the anxiety of (lay) influence over the work that lawyers do for clients.

First Page

123

Volume

27

Publication Date

1999

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