It is not uncommon for a court opinion to be correct in describing the forest, but perhaps not every tree. Such may have happened with the opinion issued by the Second District Appellate Court in Naughton v. Pfaff, writes Dennis A. Rendleman in his September Illinois Bar Journal article, “A Client or Not a Client? That Is the Question.” The Naughton ruling has made Illinois an outlier, Rendleman states, since the prevailing interpretation in the U.S. is that a referring lawyer has an attorney-client relationship with the referred individual when making a referral to a receiving lawyer. Being one’s client is a prerequisite to the establishment of a referral agreement between the referring lawyer, the client, and the receiving lawyer.

More importantly, Naughton could mislead Illinois lawyers who seek to refer individuals as to what their relationship and obligations are to those individuals under the Illinois Rules. While there might be unexplored public-policy reasons for requiring that an attorney first have an attorney-client relationship with an individual before a referral, Rendleman probes whether this interpretation sheds light on the nature of the actual relationships that have been formed.

Read the Illinois Bar Journal article, "A Client or Not a Client? That is the Question."