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3 Prof. Law. 1 (1991-1992)

handle is hein.journals/proflw3 and id is 1 raw text is: THE
PROFESSIONAL
LAWYER November 1991 Vol. 3, No. 1
Special Coordinating Committee on Professionalism
American Bar Association Center for Professional Responsibility

Groups Ask House
To Reconsider Rule
on Ancillary Business

by James Podgers
In August, the ABA House of
Delegates adopted amend-
ments to the Model Rules of
Professional Conduct that
would, if adopted at the state
level, severely restrict lawyers
from engaging in ancillary busi-
ness activities.
However, opponents of the
amendments are already initiat-
ing efforts to have the House
reconsider its action when it
meets next in early February
during the 1992 ABA Midyear
Meeting in Dallas. These efforts
are based on a contention that
the House debate in August,
held during the 1991 Annual
Meeting in Atlanta, was cut off
before all views on the ancillary
business issue could be fully
aired, If that debate had been
allowed to run its course, the ar-
gument goes, the vote to
adopt the amendments to the
Model Rules of Professional
James Podgers, an attorney in
Chicago, is editorial consultant to
The Professional Lawyer.

Conduct might very well have
turned out differently.
If only six delegates had
changed their votes, the
proposal would have failed,
contends Mark Harrison of
Phoenix, citing the extreme
closeness of the vote, in which
the House of Delegates
adopted Model Rule 5.7 by a
margin of 197-I 86 (see Litiga-
tion Measure: Questionable
Policy, Untenable Rule, Page
5). Harrison chaired a working
group that studied the ancillary
business issue for the ABA Spe-
cial Coordinating Committee
on Professionalism.
Two separate recommenda-
tions taking vastly different ap-
proaches to ancillary business
were submitted for considera-
tion by the House of Delegates
in August. The House adopted
a recommendation sponsored
by the Section of Litigation that
created Model Rule 5.7, which
would generally restrict lawyers
from engaging in ancillary
business activities not directly re-
lated to the provision of legal
services to clients (see box

accompanying this story).
Another recommendation,
submitted by the ABA Standing
Committee on Ethics and Profes-
sional Responsibility, would
generally allow lawyers to
engage in a broad range of
ancillary business activities while
implementing a series of regula-
tions on those activities.
As the House of Delegates
debate on the two proposals
unfolded, the recommendation
sponsored by the Litigation Sec-
tion was moved for adoption.
A motion to substitute the Ethics
Committee recommendation
for the Litigation Section
proposal failed. Debate
resumed on the Litigation Sec-
tion proposal, with a number of
speakers addressing the House.
However, a motion to close
debate and vote on the ques-
tion was recognized by House
Chair N. Lee Cooper of Birmin-
gham, Alabama, and ap-
proved by the House. That ac-
tion led immediately to the vote
to adopt the Litigation Section
proposal, which occurred as a
number of people, including
representatives of some other
ABA sections and committees,
were still waiting to address the
House on the issue.
That turn of parliamentary
events left representatives of a
number of groups disturbed
about the process as well as the
result of the House of
Delegates' consideration of the
ancillary business issue.
(Continued on Page 4)

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