Proposed Rules Archives

• Proposed Changes to RPC 1.10 - Imputation of Conflicts of Interest: General Rule (in Word Format)
• No comments were submitted.

Purpose: At its  September, 24, 2010 meeting the Board of Governors of the Washington State Bar Association unanimously adopted the recommendation of the Rules of Professional Conduct Committee described as follows:

This suggested amendment is intended primarily to clarify the language of the Washington conflict of interest screening rule for law firm lateral hires, as well as to bring the language closer to the recently adopted language of Model Rule 1.10, which now permits such screening. Under the current version of paragraph (e), screening is triggered “when a lawyer becomes associated with a firm.” This language suggests that screening is not available in a lateral hire situation if the conflict of interest arises at some point in time after a lawyer joins the new firm. The revised language in paragraph (e) clarifies that the screening provision is not so limited. The suggested amendment also corrects the typographical error in the cross-reference contained in paragraph (a) (it should be to paragraph (e) rather than paragraph (c)); amends commentary language to reflect that screening is now permitted under the Model Rule; and corrects a typographical error in a case name in Comment [11]. No substantive change to the Washington screening provision or the other aspects of the rule is intended. Note that if these changes are adopted, the year of the enactment will need to be added to the third sentence in Comment [9].