Court Opinion

ID: 9645400
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 21:23:35.04891+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:28.089855
License: Public Domain

FLANDERS, Justice,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I concur in the Court’s decision to grant the motion for admission pro hac vice, but *66I would also do so nunc pro tunc, as requested. Given the limited scope of Article II, Rule 9 of the Supreme Court Rules (requiring court approval before a nonresident attorney may participate in the presentation of a cause or appeal in any court of this state) and the lack of any other rule with respect to the need for nonresident lawyers to obtain pro hac vice approval from this Court before they can provide legal services in connection with a client’s participation in an administrative proceeding in this state, I would grant the motion nunc pro tunc. Doing so would also serve to obviate the inevitable tactical attempts — apparently already begun — to undercut and vitiate everything that this attorney participated in during the Energy Facility Siting Board proceedings before the Court approved the attorney’s pro hac vice motion.
Here, the nonresident attorney sought and obtained approval from the Energy Facility Siting Board to appear before it on behalf of a client — apparently following that agency’s practice and his own good faith belief that the agency possessed the delegated power to grant such approval. As the Court implicitly concedes in granting this attorney’s pro hac vice motion, good cause has been shown why he should obtain pro hac vice admission. Thus, because we are not faced with an attorney who is guilty of any bad faith or other willful misconduct, I would grant the motion nunc pro tunc, retroactive to the date that Attorney Ferrey first began to do legal work on his client’s behalf in connection with the administrative proceeding in question, and thereby stave off any attempts to invalidate or undo whatever occurred there before this Court granted the requested approval.
I also believe that pro hac vice admission for nonresident lawyers should be addressed via a rulemaking procedure, rather than, as now, by miscellaneous petitions submitted to this Court. If the Court ■wishes to establish a pro hac vice approval procedure for nonresident lawyers who propose to provide transactional legal services to clients located in this state or who seek to represent or to provide legal services to an administrative agency in this state or who wish to provide legal services to a client in connection with that client’s appearance before such an agency, then it should promulgate a rule to that effect, similar to Rule 9, upon advance notice and hearing to all interested parties and after allowing for an appropriate period of public comment about any such proposed rule.
Otherwise, by selectively granting and denying these pro hac vice requests on a case-by-case basis we are roiling the waters of the bar unnecessarily, only to reap a tidal wave of confusion and fear in response. With no rule to alert practitioners and parties to this requirement, no articulated standards for how we evaluate these motions, and no clear test for what triggers the need to obtain this Court’s approval in the first place — or for why in one case we might grant such approval retroactively, in another case we might do so prospectively but not retroactively, and, in yet another, we might deny it altogether— we are creating a trap for the unwary and engendering expensive and unnecessary collateral litigation concerning the validity of any actions taken in this state by nonresident attorneys and their clients.4 I *67would have hoped that the Court would seek to avoid such a course until and unless, with the help of the bar and other interested parties, we promulgate an appropriate rule to address multijurisdictional practice and the multifarious situations that might trigger the need for some type of pro hac vice approval process.
Moreover, the statutory provisions barring the unauthorized practice of law in this state by persons who are not admitted to the Rhode Island bar, G.L.1956 §§ 11-27-1,11-27-2, and §§ 11-27-5 through 11-27-14, do not appear to apply to “visiting attorneys at law, authorized to practice law before the courts of record in another state, while temporarily in this state on legal business * * Section 11-27-13. This statute appears on its face to immunize nonresident attorneys from compliance with Rhode Island’s unauthorized practice of law statutes — as long as such attorneys are admitted to practice in another state and are present in this state “while temporarily * * * on legal business.” Id. Note that the “legal business” that the statute permits is not restricted to legal business that originates from non-Rhode Island clients. Id. Rather, as long as the nonresident attorney is visiting this state “while temporarily * * * on legal business”— even on legal business obtained from Rhode Island clients — he or she would not appear to be engaging in the unauthorized practice of law. Id. Thus, even though the regular, continuous, or permanent practice of law in this state by nonresident attorneys would be unlawful without obtaining admission to the Rhode Island bar, legal business that is performed “while temporarily in this state” by nonresident attorneys is arguably permissible. Id.
Here, Ferre/s legal representation of a client before the Energy Facility Siting Board appears to have occurred only “while [he was] temporarily in this state on legal business.” Id. The record does not suggest that he regularly has practiced law here. Thus, I do not share the majority’s belief that granting nunc pro tunc permission to Ferrey “would have been ‘tantamount to affixing an ex post facto imprimatur of approval’ and the sanctioning of what appears to have been the illegal practice of law here by an out-of-state attorney who is not a member of the Rhode Island bar.” On the contrary, Ferrey appears to have been a visiting, nonresident attorney at law who was authorized to practice law before the courts of Massachusetts and who has conducted legal business here “while temporarily in this state” to represent a client before the Energy Facility Siting Board. As such, he would appear to be exempt from the unauthorized practice of law provisions cited by the majority.
Finally, § 11-27-3 (“Receipt of fees as practice of law”) has no application to a visiting nonresident attorney who is “temporarily in this state on legal business” under § 11-27-13. Section 11-27-3 provides that “[a]ny person, partnership, corporation, or association that receives any fee or any part of a fee for the services performed by an attorney at law shall be deemed to be practicing law contrary to the provisions of this chapter.” The “person” referenced in § 11-27-3, however, cannot possibly refer to the attorney rendering the legal services because that would lead to the absurd result that no attorney (whether a member of the Rhode Island bar or not) could receive a fee for *68the services he or she performed. Rather, § 11-27-3 is not triggered at all until such time as a third party assignee of a fee owed to an attorney actually receives a portion of the attorney’s fee. See Pearlman v. Rowell, 121 R.I. 466, 401 A.2d 19, 20 (1979). Thus, I respectfully disagree with the majority’s suggestion that § 11—27-3 bars Ferrey from receiving an attorney’s fee for his legal work as a visiting lawyer.
Hence, I would have granted the pro hoc vice request nunc pro tunc.

. Most motions to this Court requesting admission pro hac vice are resolved by unpublished orders that typically grant the motion with little or no discussion of the reasons for doing so. Thus, the mere fact that the Court has not issued a published opinion or order granting a pro hac vice request nunc pro tunc provides cold comfort to the majority's position on this issue because it tells us little or nothing about the Court's past practice in this *67respect. And given this Court's rale prohibiting both the Court and counsel from citing to the Court’s unpublished orders, see Article I, Rule 16(h) of the Supreme Court Rules of Appellate Procedure, no one can draw any inferences whatsoever about the Court’s past practice in this regard merely by pointing to the absence of any published opinions and orders on this subject.