Florida Bar News - July 14, 2023 - by Patrick R. Fargason
The ABA’s Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility released a formal opinion July 12 that provides guidance on how attorneys can share offices and staff resources with an unaffiliated attorney.
In Formal Opinion 507, the ABA opined that office sharing is permissible under the ABA’s Model Rules of Professional Conduct so long as attorneys comply with the “ethical duties concerning the confidentiality of information, conflicts of interest, supervision of nonlawyers and communications about their services.”
The opinion also points out that lawyers who share offices but do not practice together as a law firm must take appropriate steps to clearly communicate the nature of their relationship to the public and to their clients and cites the model rule regarding advertising as prohibiting any “false or misleading communication about the lawyer or the lawyer’s services.” For instance, the lawyers “may not imply or hold themselves out as practicing together in one firm when they are not a firm.”
The Florida Bar has released several ethics opinions over the years that are similar to the new guidance from the ABA. Florida Bar Ethics Opinion 88-15 advises that a lawyer may operate multiple businesses from the same suite of offices provided they adhere to certain ethical requirements.
Specifically, Opinion 88-15 requires that the lawyer protect the confidentiality of all information relating to the representation of clients, take steps to avoid misleading the public regarding the business activities in their offices, and prohibits the lawyer from engaging in in-person solicitation of legal employment.
Furthermore, Opinions 93-6 and 93-7 discuss joint ventures between separate law firms and a lawyer’s dual employment, respectively. While 93-6 states that the ethics rules do not contemplate the creation of a joint venture, 93-7 explains that a lawyer is not ethically prohibited from being simultaneously employed by two distinct law firms. However, the opinions caution that each law firm created by the lawyers must be organized and operated as a separate, bona fide law firm in compliance with the attorney advertising rules, may not exist for the sole purpose of evading the fee-division rules, and cannot operate as a “parallel law firm” where the ownership of two or more firms is identical.
In addition, ABA opinion 507 notes that having an office-sharing arrangement does not necessarily bar two attorneys from representing different clients with adverse interests in a court proceeding or a transaction provided that the lawyers protect the confidentiality of their clients’ information and do not hold themselves out as members of the same law firm. “This determination will ultimately turn on specifics of the office-sharing arrangement and the nature of the proposed representations,” the opinion said, adding disclosure of the arrangement and communicating efforts to maintain confidentiality should be provided in writing.
https://www.floridabar.org/the-florida-bar-news/ethics-opinions-provide-guidance-for-unaffiliated-lawyers-sharing-offices-and-resources/
