Also known as: professional responsibilities · legal ethics · attorney ethics
Written by attorneys · grounded in primary & secondary sources — see below
The body of ethical rules and standards that govern the conduct of lawyers in their professional activities. These rules impose a duty to provide legal services to those unable to pay.
Perry Pratt, a solo practitioner, devotes sixty hours each year to representing low-income tenants facing eviction without charging any fee. Because he meets the aspirational target of fifty hours of uncompensated legal work for persons of limited means, his conduct satisfies the professional responsibility obligation to serve those unable to pay.
Phoenix Technologies, a legal services provider, refuses to follow a county bar's minimum fee schedule for title examinations. The bar's enforcement effort is struck down because the schedule violates the professional responsibility rules requiring lawyers to avoid anticompetitive practices that harm access to legal services.
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Pedro Pacheco pleads guilty to a drug offense after his lawyer neglects to warn him that the conviction will trigger automatic removal proceedings. The conviction is later vacated because the lawyer's omission breached the professional responsibility duty to provide competent advice on the immigration consequences of the plea.
After Pearl Porter dies, federal prosecutors subpoena her former lawyer for notes of confidential conversations about a tax matter. The court upholds the privilege claim because professional responsibility rules require continued protection of client confidences even after the client's death.
Penelope Price is questioned at a police station for several hours without being told she may remain silent or consult counsel. Her later statements are suppressed because the interrogation violated professional responsibility standards requiring lawyers and officials to honor the right to legal advice during custodial questioning.
Yes. A lawyer who provides legal services in a state becomes subject to that state's disciplinary authority even if licensed elsewhere. The rule reaches conduct that occurs within the state's borders regardless of the lawyer's licensing jurisdiction.
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Law-related services fall under the rules when they are not distinct from the lawyer's legal practice or when the lawyer fails to take reasonable measures to inform recipients that the services are not legal services and lack client-lawyer protections.
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Every lawyer has a professional responsibility to provide legal services to those unable to pay and should aspire to render at least fifty hours of pro bono publico legal services each year, with a substantial majority devoted to persons of limited means without fee or expectation of fee.
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…the prosecutor but not to himself. This danger shrinks markedly in the police station where indeed the lawyer in fulfilling his professional responsibilities of necessity may become an obstacle to truthfinding. See infra , n. 12. The Court's summary citation of the Sixth Amendment cases here seems to me best described as "the domino method of…