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American Bar Association The American Bar Association (ABA) is a voluntary bar association of lawyers and law students, which is not specific to any jurisdiction in the United States. Founded in 1878, the ABA's most important stated activities are the setting of aca ...
's Model Rules of Professional Conduct (MRPC) are a set of rules and commentaries on the ethical and professional responsibilities of members of the legal profession in the
United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...
. Although the MRPC generally is not binding law in and of itself, it is intended to be a ''model'' for state regulators of the legal profession (such as bar associations) to adopt, while leaving room for state-specific adaptations. All fifty states and the District of Columbia have adopted legal ethics rules based at least in part on the MRPC. In almost all U.S.
jurisdictions Jurisdiction (from Latin 'law' + 'declaration') is the legal term for the legal authority granted to a legal entity to enact justice. In federations like the United States, areas of jurisdiction apply to local, state, and federal levels. Ju ...
, prospective attorneys seeking admission to a state bar are typically required to demonstrate knowledge of the MRPC by achieving a sufficiently high score on the
Multistate Professional Responsibility Examination The Multistate Professional Responsibility Examination (MPRE) is a 120-minute, 60-question, multiple-choice examination designed to measure the knowledge and understanding of established standards related to a lawyer's professional conduct. It i ...
.


Organization

The MRPC is organized into eight major categories of rules (numbered 1 through 8), each of which contains up to 18 individual rules within, numbered using a decimal point to denote the hierarchy and organization of rules. The 8 major categories of rules are as follows: In addition to the text of the rules, each rule is followed by a series of "Comments" which are not rules per se, but provide guidance to help attorneys interpret the rules.


History

The MRPC is part of a series of attempts by the American legal profession to develop a centralized authority on legal ethics.


Predecessors

In 1908, the ABA's Committee on Code of Professional Ethics delivered the "Canons of Professional Ethics," which set forth general principles and responsibilities for members of the legal profession. The Canons drew heavily from the
Alabama State Bar Association The Alabama State Bar is the integrated (mandatory) bar association of the U.S. state of Alabama. The Alabama State Bar was established in 1923 and is governed by th1975 Alabama Code, Title 34, Chapter 3 It is the "licensing and regulatory age ...
's 1887 Code of Ethics. At the time, the Committee suggested "that the subject of professional ethics be taught in all law schools, and that all candidates for admission to the Bar be examined thereon."
Lewis F. Powell, Jr. Lewis Franklin Powell Jr. (September 19, 1907 – August 25, 1998) was an American lawyer and jurist who served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1972 to 1987. Born in Suffolk, Virginia, he graduate ...
, then-President of the ABA (and later an
Associate Justice Associate justice or associate judge (or simply associate) is a judicial panel member who is not the chief justice in some jurisdictions. The title "Associate Justice" is used for members of the Supreme Court of the United States and some sta ...
on the U.S. Supreme Court), in 1964 asked that a Special Committee be formed to review the Canons. While the Canons were still viewed as "sound in substance," they had come to be seen as disorganized, dated, and "not an effective teaching instrument" for lawyers. The result of this effort was the
Model Code of Professional Responsibility The American Bar Association Model Code of Professional Responsibility, created by the American Bar Association (ABA) in 1969, was a set of professional standards designed to establish the minimum baseline of legal ethics and professional responsib ...
, which took effect in 1970. Although differently organized, the Code was substantively similar to the Canons.


The Kutak Commission

The 1970s saw the
Watergate scandal The Watergate scandal was a major political scandal in the United States involving the administration of President Richard Nixon from 1972 to 1974 that led to Nixon's resignation. The scandal stemmed from the Nixon administration's contin ...
, which led to the resignation of
President President most commonly refers to: *President (corporate title) * President (education), a leader of a college or university * President (government title) President may also refer to: Automobiles * Nissan President, a 1966–2010 Japanese ...
Richard M. Nixon. Attorneys were involved in Watergate in many ways, leading to concerns that "the self-governance of the profession" was imperiled. Motivated in part by this concern, in 1977 the
American Bar Association The American Bar Association (ABA) is a voluntary bar association of lawyers and law students, which is not specific to any jurisdiction in the United States. Founded in 1878, the ABA's most important stated activities are the setting of aca ...
(ABA) formed the Kutak Commission (formally the Commission on Evaluation of Professional Standards) for the purpose of evaluating the adequacy of the existing ethics rules, including the Model Code of Professional Responsibility. Chaired by Robert J. Kutak, co-founder of the law firm Kutak Rock LLP, the Commission set out "to develop professional standards that are comprehensive, consistent, constitutional and, most important, congruent with other law of which they are a part." Finding it infeasible to modernize the rules via a set of amendments to the existing Model Code, the Commission developed various drafts of a new set of rules, and collecting feedback from a wide range of stakeholders. It issued a Proposed Final Draft in May 1981, which the ABA House of Delegates discussed and debated over the course of the following two years. With some amendments, the House of Delegates adopted the new Model Rules of Professional Conduct at its August 1983 annual meeting. In the course of the drafting process and debate, the Kutak Commission recommended, and the House of Delegates approved, that for ease of use the MRPC be set forth in a format akin to the
American Law Institute The American Law Institute (ALI) is a research and advocacy group of judges, lawyers, and legal scholars established in 1923 to promote the clarification and simplification of United States common law and its adaptation to changing social needs ...
's '' Restatements of the Law'' with numbered rules and supplemental comments discussing each rule. The Commission argued that this format would be familiar to lawyers and would clearly delineate the "black-letter Rules" from the helpful but nonbinding "interpretive guidance" in the comments.


Amendments

After the 1983 adoption of the MRPC, the ABA's Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility has regularly reviewed the MRPC and proposed various amendments to the House of Delegates. One major overhaul began in 1997, when the ABA formed the "Ethics 2000 Commission" to review the MRPC in its entirety. This review was prompted by increasing levels of variation in states' implementations of the MRPC as well as the impact of technological developments and other changes in the modern practice of law. The Ethics 2000 Commission proposed various amendments to the MRPC, covering topics such as attorneys' communications with clients and third parties, confidentiality,
conflicts of interest A conflict of interest (COI) is a situation in which a person or organization is involved in multiple wikt:interest#Noun, interests, finance, financial or otherwise, and serving one interest could involve working against another. Typically, t ...
, issues specific to law firms, pro bono service, and obligations to the court. The House of Delegates further amended and then adopted many of the Commission's proposals. As of March 2020, the most recent amendment to the MRPC was in August 2018, when the House of Delegates approved changes to Model Rule 7 concerning attorney advertising and client solicitation.


State adoption

Because the MRPC does not itself have the force of law, it relies on regulators at the state level to adopt it in full or in part, potentially with state-specific modifications. By the end of 2009, 49 states and the
District of Columbia ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle (Washington, D.C.), Logan Circle, Jefferson Memoria ...
had adopted the MRPC in some form.
California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...
remained an outlier until November 2018, when new ethics rules modeled after the MRPC went into effect.


Variation across states

The ABA maintains detaile
tables of each state's version of each Model Rule
allowing for direct comparisons across jurisdictions. Some straightforward rules, such as th
Rule 2.1
requirement that "a lawyer shall exercise independent professional judgment and render candid advice," are adopted without modification by the vast majority of jurisdictions. On the other hand, some of the more detailed rules, such a
Rule 1.15
governing attorneys' handling of client property, are the subject of extensive modifications in nearly all states. The ABA also provides, for each state, links to that state's full rules of professional conduct as well as ethics opinions rendered by the state's governing authority.


California

Until recently, California had not adopted the MRPC. California's recent changes to largely adopt the MRPC came out of a lengthy effort to overhaul the state's ethics rules. Noting that the last overhaul of the California ethics rules was in 1992, in the early 2000s the
State Bar of California The State Bar of California is California's official attorney licensing agency. It is responsible for managing the admission of lawyers to the practice of law, investigating complaints of professional misconduct, prescribing appropriate disciplin ...
formed a Commission for the Revision of the Rules of Professional Conduct tasked with considering intervening changes in the law and the findings of the ABA's Ethics 2000 Commission. The new Commission's goals included reducing ambiguities, protecting the public and the integrity of the legal profession, and avoiding "unnecessary differences between California and other states." The Commission eventually proposed rules revisions to the state
Supreme Court A supreme court is the highest court within the hierarchy of courts in most legal jurisdictions. Other descriptions for such courts include court of last resort, apex court, and high (or final) court of appeal. Broadly speaking, the decisions of ...
in 2012, but the Court responded with a request that the State Bar form a ''second'' Commission to further evaluate the rules. That second Commission convened in 2014, with a goal of submitting new rules to the Supreme Court by March 2017. The new Commission's goals were similar to those of the first, but noted that in some cases the MRPC could be a guide in the quest to reduce differences between California and other states. The State Bar ultimately submitted its new proposal to the California Supreme Court on March 30, 2017. On May 10, 2018, the
Supreme Court of California The Supreme Court of California is the Supreme court, highest and final court of appeals in the judiciary of California, courts of the U.S. state of California. It is headquartered in San Francisco at the Earl Warren Building, but it regularly h ...
entered an administrative order on the 70 proposed rules which approved 27 rules in full, approved 42 rules with modifications, and rejected only one rule. The rules took effect on November 1, 2018. The ne
California rules
are numbered so as to closely map to their MRPC analogues.


Use by Tribunals

Although the MRPC does not have binding effect on its own, some courts and
administrative agencies A government or state agency, sometimes an appointed commission, is a permanent or semi-permanent organization in the machinery of government that is responsible for the oversight and administration of specific functions, such as an administratio ...
that are not confined to a single state refer to or explicitly follow the MRPC in their opinions, court rules, or
regulations Regulation is the management of complex systems according to a set of rules and trends. In systems theory, these types of rules exist in various fields of biology and society, but the term has slightly different meanings according to context. Fo ...
.


Federal Courts


Citation

The U.S. Supreme Court occasionally mentions the MRPC when considering cases that involve attorney conduct in some way. For example, in 1986, the Court in '' Nix v. Whiteside'' cited several of the Rules to support the general proposition that an attorney must not assist a client in "conduct that the lawyer knows to be illegal or
fraudulent In law, fraud is intentional deception to secure unfair or unlawful gain, or to deprive a victim of a legal right. Fraud can violate civil law (e.g., a fraud victim may sue the fraud perpetrator to avoid the fraud or recover monetary compens ...
," and furthermore must take steps to prevent clients from offering
false testimony Perjury (also known as foreswearing) is the intentional act of swearing a false oath or falsifying an affirmation to tell the truth, whether spoken or in writing, concerning matters material to an official proceeding."Perjury The act or an inst ...
to a court.


Incorporation into court rules

Some federal courts that operate in multiple states explicitly adopt some or all of the MRPC either for attorney conduct in general or for certain specific purposes. These courts include: Some other federal courts of appeals do not use the MRPC, but instead defer to state rules of professional conduct. For example, the Fourth Circuit subjects attorneys to discipline for violations of "the rules of professional conduct or responsibility in effect in the state or other jurisdiction in which the attorney maintains his or her principal office." The First Circuit does the same, but also holds attorneys to the rules of conduct for the state "in which the attorney is acting at the time of the misconduct" as well as the rules of the state of the
court clerk A court clerk (British English: clerk to the court or clerk of the court ; American English: clerk of the court or clerk of court ) is an officer of the court whose responsibilities include maintaining records of a court, administer oaths to witn ...
's office. Because federal district courts sit within a single
state State may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Literature * ''State Magazine'', a monthly magazine published by the U.S. Department of State * ''The State'' (newspaper), a daily newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina, United States * ''Our S ...
, many use the professional conduct rules of that state.


Administrative agencies

A small number of federal
administrative agencies A government or state agency, sometimes an appointed commission, is a permanent or semi-permanent organization in the machinery of government that is responsible for the oversight and administration of specific functions, such as an administratio ...
incorporate the MRPC into their rules of practice and procedure. For example, the Federal Maritime Commission requires attorneys practicing before it to conform to the MRPC. The Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission demands not only that attorneys comply with the "letter and spirit" of the MRPC, but that its ''judges'' do as well. And attorneys representing veterans pursuing claims for benefits are subject to standards of conduct "consistent with" the MRPC.38 U.S.C. § 5904(a)(2).
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See also

*
Admission to practice law An admission to practice law is acquired when a lawyer receives a license to practice law. In jurisdictions with two types of lawyer, as with barristers and solicitors, barristers must gain admission to the bar whereas for solicitors there are dist ...
*
American Bar Association The American Bar Association (ABA) is a voluntary bar association of lawyers and law students, which is not specific to any jurisdiction in the United States. Founded in 1878, the ABA's most important stated activities are the setting of aca ...
*
Legal ethics Legal ethics are principles of conduct that members of the legal profession are expected to observe in their practice. They are an outgrowth of the development of the legal profession itself. In the United States In the U.S., each state or territ ...
* Professional responsibility *
State bar association A state bar association is a bar association that represents or seeks to represent the attorneys practicing law in a particular U.S. state. Their functions differ from state to state, but often include administration of the state bar examination fo ...


References

{{Reflist


External links

* AB
Model Rules of Professional Conduct
1983 in law Legal ethics Codes of conduct American Bar Association Law of the United States 1983 documents