Concept
Client's Right to Discharge
Law reform activities affecting client interests
Client's Right to Discharge
Rule 6.4 lets a lawyer serve as a director, officer, or member of a law reform organization even though the reform may affect a client's interests.1 That freedom answers what the disciplinary system asks of the lawyer. It does not answer whether a client must keep a lawyer whose public work the client dislikes, and the client need not. The client's prerogative on choice of counsel remains an important qualification on the lawyer's freedom to engage in law reform.2
A displeased client has two possible responses, and they lead to different results. The first is a complaint that the lawyer breached a formal professional duty. It ordinarily fails. A lawyer is entitled to a sphere of political freedom in which to take part in public life as a citizen, and that freedom holds even when the client disagrees with a reform proposal or would be affected by it, so long as the activity does not directly harm an ongoing representation.3 The second response is discharge, and it succeeds. The client is entitled to discharge the lawyer if the lawyer's conduct or statements in personal or public life offend the client, and as a general rule a client may discharge a lawyer for any reason or for no reason.4 Discipline asks whether the lawyer broke a rule; discharge asks only whether the client still wants this lawyer.
Each half of that result has its own reason. The misconduct claim fails because a client who dislikes the lawyer's public advocacy cannot convert that dislike into a breach. If the client could, the client would be imposing a worldview on the lawyer, and the source is explicit that a client may not do that as a matter of formal obligation.5 The discharge right follows from the fiduciary and confidential nature of the attorney-client relationship. Because of that nature, the client may insist upon a different lawyer with whose expressed views the client is more comfortable.6
The facts never changed between the two attempts; the remedy did. Misconduct requires a breached duty, and none existed. Discharge requires nothing beyond the client's own loss of comfort with the lawyer, so it succeeded on the same facts.
Discharge also differs from the conflict analysis in the previous section. In some circumstances the lawyer's reform work materially harms the representation, and a true conflict of interest arises that requires the lawyer's withdrawal.7 That is a problem inside the representation. Discharge needs no showing of harm, breach, or conflict. The client's right therefore limits the lawyer's freedom only in practical terms: a lawyer whose reform work offends clients may lose them, and the reform work does not thereby become a breach of duty.
An exam stem about an unhappy client invites two wrong answers. One says the lawyer must abandon the reform work because the client objects. The other says the client is stuck with the lawyer because the lawyer did nothing wrong. The right answer separates the remedies: no misconduct complaint lies for advocacy that does not directly harm the representation, and the client remains free to fire the lawyer.