THE AMERICAN BAR Association’s House of Delegates began considering proposed revisions to the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct when it convened in Chicago for the association’s 2001 Annual Meeting last month. Deliberations on possible changes in the national model ethics standards for lawyers will continue in February, when the ABA House of Delegates reconvenes in Philadelphia.

House of Delegates members – representing ABA entities, state and local bar associations, specialty and national ethnic bar associations and other law-related groups – are considering more than 50 proposed changes in the national ethics model code. The ABA policy-making body is taking up each revision individually and voting to adopt, reject or amend the proposal. When it completes debate and action on all of the proposals, it will entertain a motion to adopt the full report of the ABA’s Ethics 2000 Commission, as revised in those individual votes.

Only then will the ethics code measures become association policy and be circulated to state supreme courts and ethics agencies for their consideration. Because lawyers are licensed at the state level, it is only by action of state licensing authorities that any ethics rule applies to the conduct of individual lawyers across the nation.

At the Annual Meeting, the House:

• Declined to require lawyers to put all fee agreements with their clients in writing. Under existing rules, only contingent fees must be committed to writing.
• Adopted a requirement that clients sign express agreements when they waive conflicts of interest.
• Adopted a prohibition on lawyers having sex with their clients, except when the sexual relationship predated the lawyer-client relationship.
• Expanded the discretion of lawyers to reveal confidential information to prevent reasonably certain death or substantial bodily harm, but declined to expand that discretion to cover a situation where a client is using the lawyer’s services to commit crimes or frauds reasonably certain to result in substantial injury to the financial interests or property of another.

For more information on the Ethics 2000 report, visit http://www.abanet.org/cpr/e2k-summary_2001.html.

In other actions, the House of Delegates:

• Approved Election Administration Guidelines, developed in response to the last national election.
• Opposed federal law, regulation or policy that prohibits foreign non-governmental organizations that receive U.S. government financial aid from using their own funds to provide lawful health or medical services.
• Approved standards for telephone legal advice and information hotlines.
• Urged amendment of federal statutes to expressly allow the secretaries of U.S. armed forces branches to accept volunteer legal services, making legal aid more readily available to service personnel.
• Opposed legislation that would create special legal immunity from civil tort liability for the firearms industry.

A complete listing of all House of Delegates action during the 2001 Annual Meeting is available online at http://www.abanet.org/ftp/pub/leadership/2001journal.doc.

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