Does the "ethical wall" work, is it related to reality?

Question

In serving pro-bono customers, does the "ethical wall" make any sense, is it "for real"? How does a law firm conciliate the interests of attracting, or preserving a very wealthy and profitable account with the interests of an indigent or non-profit client that the law firm might not serve twice in a lifetime?

Answer 1

It' is a necessary non-fiction given the laws/rules that exist.

Let's take a 1000 person firm, spread out across the US in a dozen offices. Under the rules as written, the knowledge of one person in that firm is imputed to every single other member of the firm. Even if they don't ever communicate, or don't even know the other 900 attorneys exist. That's unreasonable.

The ethical wall allows an attorney to work with a client on a non-direct conflict, simply by keeping isolated from other attorneys that are involved in the collateral conflict.

It makes it more likely that a large firm would be willing to do pro-bono work, because the firm now doesn't have to lose the big client or sacrifice the pro-bono client, just because 10 years ago the pro-bono client sued a later-acquired subsidiary of the big client on an unrelated issue in a different state.

Under current conflict laws in most jurisdictions, that tenuous collateral interaction is enough to disqualify the firm. Which, for a firm of 1000 attorneys in 12 states, is really just silly. The entire system for determining conflicts needs to be re-worked, and until then the ethical wall is the best solution available to reflect the reality of practice.

Answer 2

china wall? has flaws court cases current