Opinion ID: 2227403
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The Client-Lawyer Relationship

Text: The client-lawyer relationship, which is defined by the Indiana Rules of Professional Conduct, exists to advance the interests of the client, not the lawyer. [6] Once created, this relationship places a multitude of duties on the lawyer. An attorney who breaches any of these duties may face both disciplinary action and a legal malpractice claim. These Rules and this Court's willingness to enforce them help ensure that the public is well served by the bar. Forces that undermine the standards on which the Rules of Professional Conduct are founded disserve the public by weakening the client-lawyer relationship. We believe the free assignment of legal malpractice claims would do just that. Assignment of legal malpractice claims would weaken at least two standards that define the lawyer's duty to the client: the duty to act loyally and the duty to maintain client confidentiality.
The assignment of a legal malpractice claim is perhaps most incompatible with the attorney's duty of loyalty. An attorney's loyalty is likely to be weakened by the knowledge that a client can sell off a malpractice claim, particularly if an adversary can buy it. If an attorney is providing zealous representation to a client, the client's adversary will likely be motivated to strike back at the attorney in any permissible fashion. If an adversary can retaliate by buying up a client's malpractice action, attorneys will begin to rethink the wisdom of zealous advocacy. A legal system that discourages loyalty to the client, disserves that client. While attorneys probably remain protected from their client's opponents as long as they please their client, even happy client relationships have been known to spawn malpractice claims. See Christison, 83 Ill. App.3d 334, 339, 39 Ill.Dec. 560, 563, 405 N.E.2d 8, 11 (trustee of estate of a happy but bankrupt client brought malpractice action against bankrupt's attorney). If assignments were permitted, we suspect that they would become an important bargaining chip in the negotiation of settlements  particularly for clients without a deep pocket. An adversary might well make a favorable settlement offer to a judgment-proof or financially strapped client in exchange for the assignment of that client's right to bring a malpractice claim against his attorney. Lawyers involved in such negotiations would quickly realize that the interests of their clients were incompatible with their own self-interest. The court in Washington has suggested that attorneys representing such clients would be bound by loyalty to sacrifice their own hides (and the deep pockets of their malpractice insurance carriers) in order to secure a favorable settlement for their client. [7]
An attorney's duty to maintain the confidences of a client is also threatened by the assignment of legal malpractice claims. Whenever an attorney is sued by a client, the attorney is permitted to reveal confidential client information reasonably necessary to establish a defense. Ind. Professional Conduct Rule 1.6(b)(2). So long as the client retains control over the suit, the scope of the disclosure can be limited by the client's power to drop the claim. Once the client assigns the claim, however, the client's control over the litigation is lost, but the attorney's right to defend himself or herself by revealing client information survives. The client is relegated to observing from the sidelines as the assignee pursues the attorney. If the attorney reasonably responds to the assignee's claim by revealing information the client would have preferred remain confidential, the client cannot prevent the attorney's disclosures. Clients who anticipate this possibility would be no better off than those who are blind-sided by it. Far-sighted clients would be encouraged to withhold damaging information from their attorney in order to preserve their ability to sell off a malpractice claim without the fear of losing control over that information. This result erodes the principles fostered by the duty of confidentiality. Rules which discourage an attorney from acting loyally and confidentially toward a client should not be erected without very good cause. Some argue that allowing malpractice claims to be sold on the market would increase their value and promote more such lawsuits. [8] An increase in malpractice claims, they argue, would better discipline the bar. There is no evidence to suggest, however, that the threat of client-driven malpractice claims does not already affect lawyer behavior. Free assignment of malpractice claims might add marginally to the efficiency of collecting on such claims, but it would also do harm in countless other client-lawyer relationships in which no malpractice has occurred. Unlike any other commercial transaction, the client-lawyer relationship is structured to function within an adversarial legal system. In order to operate within this system, the relationship must do more than bind together a client and a lawyer. It must also work to repel attacks from legal adversaries. Those who are not privy to the relationship are often purposefully excluded because they are pursuing interests adverse to the client's interests. For example, Picadilly's relationship with attorneys Raikos and Thomas was maintained for one purpose  to defeat Colvin's tort suit against Picadilly. To say that Colvin was not part of Picadilly's client-lawyer relationship throws too benevolent a light on Colvin's true role as Picadilly's adversary. Colvin, after all, was the antagonist who drove Picadilly to seek out the protection offered by the client-lawyer relationship. [9]