Practice News

President John E. Thies presented ISBA’s position against changing ABA ethics guidelines to permit nonlawyer ownership of law firms and sharing of law firm fees with nonlawyers in debate before the ABA House of Delegates on Monday. The ISBA Board of Governors passed a resolution in support of retaining a previously-adopted ABA policy that disallows such arrangements. ISBA and the ABA Senior Lawyers Division were the lead sponsors of Resolution 10A in the House of Delegates.

Resolution 10A seeks to reaffirm existing ABA policy that dates from 2000 – the MacCrate Resolution. That followed from an effort by accounting firms to provide legal services to their clients.

These accounting firms were dismissive of our ethical rules and persuaded an ABA commission that we should abolish the Rule 5.4 prohibition against the sharing of legal fees with non-lawyers and non-lawyer ownership.

This was Multi-Disciplinary Practice, or “MDP”, and permitting it was described as a critical part of providing better service to clients – it was supposed to be “consumer” friendly.

In actuality, it was an attempt to pad the bottom line at the expense of client service and protection.

Read the full text of President Thies’ remarks here

Asked and Answered

By John W. Olmstead, MBA, Ph.D, CMC

Q. I am an attorney in Chicago. I am the sole owner of an estate planning practice consisting of 4 other attorneys, 4 paralegals, and 2 administrative support staff members. We have reached a size where I am having problems handling and balancing the demands of serving my clients and managing my firm. It seems I am working day and night and have no time for anything but work. I am frustrated and it is driving my crazy? I would appreciate any thoughts that you may have.

Illinois State Bar Association President John E. Thies debated the merits of an ethics proposal that would allow nonlawyers to be owners of and share fees of law firms before the American Bar Association's Young Lawyers Division Assembly on Friday afternoon in Chicago. The ISBA Board of Governors passed a resolution in support of retaining a previously-adopted ABA policy that disallows such arrangements.

Thies debated former ABA President Tommy Wells on the issue. ISBA members Christopher Niro and ABA YLD Chair Michael G. Bergmann also spoke on behalf of the measure. The YLD Assembly voted 89-65 in support of ISBA's resolution. The issue is scheduled for consideration by the ABA House of Delegates on Monday, Aug. 6.

The resolution reaffirms the ABA policy – adopted in 2000 – that law firms shall not be owned by non-lawyers and legal fees shall not be shared with non-lawyers. Proposals that would change this policy have been circulated in connection with the work of the ABA’s Commission on Ethics 20/20.

As computing solutions become more and more mobile and interconnected, questions and concerns about security arise with ever greater urgency, particularly in the context of law, with strict requirements to preserve client confidentiality.  To make some sense of all the emerging choices for storing and retrieving client data, International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) Peer Group for Server Operations and Security said Thursday is developing guidelines, according to Evan Koblenz at Law.com, ILTA Developing Law Firm Security Model The guidelines are due out in October. For now, Victoria Stovall suggests Website Security Basics for Lawyers at Attorney at Work. Financial Institutions already have informational guidelines for using outside services to store data (cloud computing) in a white paper published by the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council Information Technology Subcommittee, Outsourced Cloud Computing posted at Hunt on Privacy Blog. With the emergence of mobile devices, security has become an even more important issue.