Court Opinion

ID: 9584109
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:44:38.729988+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:02:36.579550
License: Public Domain

Caporale, L,
concurring.
While I agree with the judgment reached by the majority, I write separately because I think writing that there was no conflict between Patrick B. Hays and Robert P. Lindemeier overstates the situation. The controlling fact is merely that there was no actual conflict which was proved detrimental to Hays’ representation of Fletcher.
But I also submit that the trial bench and practicing bar are entitled to a bit more guidance than simply being advised that they should be cognizant of the mischief which can be created by the appointment of office-sharing counsel with competing interests.
Three separate canons of our Code of Professional Responsibility address the concerns such representation raises. Canon 4 requires that a lawyer preserve the confidences and secrets of a client. Canon 5 requires that a lawyer exercise independent professional judgment on behalf of a client. Canon 9 requires that a lawyer avoid even the appearance of professional impropriety. More specifically, Canon 5, DR 5-105(D), provides that if “a lawyer is required to decline employment or to withdraw from employment under a Disciplinary Rule, no partner, associate, or any other lawyer affiliated with the lawyer or his or her firm may accept or continue such employment.” (Emphasis supplied.)
The public could well consider it difficult, if not impossible, for attorneys sharing staff, equipment, or space to preserve the confidences and secrets of clients and to exercise independent professional judgment on behalf of those clients. Thus, the American Bar Association specifically noted in ABA Comm, on Ethics and Professional Responsibility, Informal Op. 995 at 156-57 (1975): “In [the unpublished] Informal Opinion 284 we held: ‘Two lawyers who share offices, although not partners, bear such close relation to one another as to bring [the canon *1035prohibiting the representation of conflicting interests] into play.’ ” A formal American Bar Association opinion issued in 1934 concluded that attorneys sharing office facilities should act as if they are members of the same firm on questions that may involve a conflict of interest. ABA Comm, on Ethics and Professional Responsibility, Formal Op. 104 at 356 (1967) declared: “An attorney who shares a law office with a police judge, although the two are not partners, may not represent persons arraigned before the police judge.” The opinion noted that “the public, knowing of their intimate relation as office associates, may infer that there is some influence operating in their establishment . . . and against inference, however unfounded, [the attorneys sharing office facilities] should guard themselves.” Id. at 357. More recently, the Wisconsin State Bar Standing Committee on Professional Ethics concluded that “the rule that prohibits an attorney in a firm from accepting employment because another attorney in the firm is so prohibited due to a conflict of interest also extends to attorneys sharing office facilities. Wis. B. Bull., June 1979 Supplement, at 94 (Memorandum Opinion 2-78, n.d.).” Olavi Maru, 1980 Supplement to the Digest of Bar Association Ethics Opinions ¶ 13222 at 619 (1982).
It is the foregoing precepts that the bench and bar need to keep in mind.