Opinion ID: 1921333
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: acting as a law clerk

Text: The basic distinction between the activities of a law clerk and those of a lawyer is that a law clerk works for an employing attorney, while an attorney engages in professional activities for a client. Perhaps the most definitive statement in case law of just what a law clerk may do is embodied in the following from Ferris v. Snively, 172 Wash. 167, 19 P.2d 942 (1933): We realize that law clerks have their place in a law office, and we recognize the fact that the nature of their work approaches in a degree that of their employers. The line of demarcation as to where their work begins and where it ends cannot always be drawn with absolute distinction or accuracy. Probably as nearly as it can be fixed, and it is sufficient to say that it is work of a preparatory nature, such as research, investigation of details, the assemblage of data and other necessary information, and such other work as will assist the employing attorney in carrying the matter to a completed product, either by his personal examination and approval thereof or by additional effort on his part. The work must be such, however, as loses its separate identity and becomes either the product, or else merged in the product, of the attorney himself. [Emphasis added.] 19 P.2d at 945. A further statement on the same subject is as follows: A lawyer can employ lay secretaries, lay investigators, lay detectives, lay researchers, accountants, lay scriveners, nonlawyer draftsmen, or nonlawyer researchers. In fact, he may employ nonlawyers to do any task for him except counsel clients about law matters, engage directly in the practice of law, appear in court or appear in formal proceedings a part of the judicial process, so long as it is he who takes the work and vouches for it to the client and becomes responsible to the client. ABA Comm. on Professional Ethics, Opinions, No. 316 (Supp.1967), quoted from 71 Colum.L. Rev. 1153, 1172. In In re McKelvey, 82 Cal.App. 426, 255 P. 834 (1927), a disbarred attorney, upon application for reinstatement, was held not to have engaged in the practice of law during the 10-year period following his disbarment although the evidence showed that he had been employed as a law clerk for brief intervals during that period and that he had, as a law clerk, done research and prepared briefs and pleadings and had given advice on minor legal matters to clients of his attorney-employer. The court held that the petitioner had not attempted by these actions to practice law indirectly and thus evade the effect of his disbarment in light of the fact that the evidence failed to show that he was: 1. Obtaining clients; 2. Retaining his former clients; 3. Serving clients with the connivance of another attorney and through the use of another attorney's name; or 4. Receiving a law clerk's salary as a surrogate for legal fees. A disbarred attorney who is ostensibly employed as a clerk in the office of a licensed attorney engages in the practice of law when he retains his own clients, acts independently of the licensed attorney in matters regarding legal advice, and handles legal matters in toto, in that the alleged attorney-employer has knowledge of the existence of such matters but does not supervise or manage their progress and disposition. Upon these facts, the attorney-employer is subject to discipline. Crawford v. State Bar of California, 54 Cal.2d 659, 7 Cal.Rptr. 746, 355 P.2d 490 (1960). In the instant case, however, it is not necessary for us to decide whether the petitioner was in fact a law clerk when he assisted Robert Feidler in the defense of Robert Blackburn, since we have already concluded that he engaged in the practice of law while suspended.