Opinion ID: 2261551
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Power of this Court to Promulgate R.1:20A

Text: There is something almost anachronistic about the challenge to the Court's power to adopt R. 1:20A under the New Jersey Constitution. For 33 years this Court has exercised plenary, exclusive, and almost unchallenged power over the practice of law in all of its aspects under N.J.Const. (1947), Art. VI, § II, par. 3. The enormous scope of this power puts R. 1:20A in proper perspective. Though critically important, it is but a minor regulation of the practice of law compared to others whose validity is beyond dispute. The heart of the constitutional provisions concerning the judicial system was the concentration of responsibility for its proper functioning in the Supreme Court and Chief Justice. Such responsibility requires appropriate power over courts, judges, practice and procedure, and lawyers. Responsibility for an adversarial judicial system requires responsibility for the adversaries, and control over both. In exercising this responsibility, one of the many goals this Court has sought to achieve has been maintaining public confidence in the judicial system. The intended direct beneficiary of that system is the litigant, the client, who can realistically gain access to it only through his relationship with a lawyer. The value of the judicial product depends upon the effectiveness of this access, the effectiveness of this relationship. If lawyers refuse to represent, the judicial system is almost worthless; if the terms and conditions of representation are unfair, the judicial system is impaired to that extent. This dependency of the public's confidence in the judicial system on its satisfaction with lawyer-client relationships is not theoretical: those dissatisfied with the system include a fair proportion dissatisfied with their lawyer. The most common cause of that dissatisfaction concerns fees, see section IIIA, infra. Given the critical importance of the constitutional power of this Court over the practice of law, and its pervasiveness, starting with admission, ending with disbarment, and covering everything in between, we have no doubt that the power extends to every aspect of fee agreements between lawyers and clients. If this Court can set a limit on fees for certain matters, American Trial Lawyers v. New Jersey Supreme Court, 66 N.J. 258 (1974) (upholding the contingent fee schedule promulgated in R. 1:21-7); require service for no fee at all in others, State v. Rush, supra, 46 N.J. at 411-12 (noting this Court's authority to require attorneys to defend indigents without charge); and disregard completely fee agreements in all matters (if they are unreasonable), Steiner v. Stein, 2 N.J. 367, 372 (1949) ( see section IIC, infra ); if, in short, this Court has the authority to control the substance of the fee relationship, then a power of a lesser magnitude  determining the procedure for resolving fee disputes  must also be within our province. [6]