Fee-sharing basics

Referrals -- and the fee sharing that often goes with them -- are a common and perfectly legitimate part of p.i. practice. But when it comes to fee sharing, you have to get it right. Make a mistake and you can quickly find yourself in trouble with the ARDC. That's why you'd be wise to take a look at Albert E. Durkin's concise summary of fee-sharing basics in the latest Tort Trends, newsletter of the ISBA Tort Law Section. The biggest source of trouble, Albert says: "Receiving a case from another attorney can become problematic when [he or she]...cannot be a 'referring attorney' as defined under the provisions of IRPC 1.5, and, therefore, cannot be disclosed as sharing in the fees or sharing in the financial responsibility of a case to the client. Examples...are when the referring attorney either has a conflict of interest or works for a firm or agency that prohibits maintaining a financial interest in cases outside of their employment."