Hi everybody. My name's Andy and welcome
to my office in Los Altos,
California. I'm an attorney licensed to
practice law in California as well as
New York. In this video, I'm going to go
over the California Rules of
Professional Conduct for attorneys. Now
unless you're an attorney yourself or
you are a law student right now or I suppose
unless you're married to an attorney or
married to a law student, uh, you probably have
never heard of the Rules of Professional
Conduct before so let me explain. There
are a couple ways to think of this i
think. Uh, the most linear kind of most
straightforward way is that the Rules of
Professional Conduct are a set of basic
rules governing behavior, I guess, that
all lawyers know simply because they are
attorneys. So this is, you know, without
regard to whatever specialty, without regard
to whatever expertise a
particular lawyer might have. All
lawyers know the Rules of Professional
Conduct simply because they are
attorneys. I guess think of it like this as well.
If you've ever been to court and you
see lawyers going to argue their case
in California, uh, those lawyers have a
certain specific skillset, I guess, like
they know rules that are specific to the
courtroom about things like, you know,
what to say, when to say it,
what paperwork to file, when to file it,
etc. That skillset is not
something that every lawyer has simply
because they are an attorney. Uh, the Rules of
Professional Conduct, again, are things
that all lawyers known simply because
they are lawyers. You can also think of
it this way, I guess. If you've ever seen
lawyers on TV on, you know, TV shows
or, in the movies or something,
there are certain stereotypes, I think,
that all lawyers tend to fall in to. Some
of them true, some of them not. The ones
that are not true, for example, would be
like, you know, all lawyers wear suits and
ties, all lawyers have that big wall in
the office, I guess, of law books where
they're like, you know, bound in leather
and have gold stenciling on them,
etc.
Not every lawyer has that. There are
certain stereotypes, though, that I think are
true and one of them, I think, is that,
you know, the Rules of Professional, I
guess, let me phrase it more generally. There
are certain rules that all lawyers know
simply because they are lawyers
so the thing is lawyers are kind of
similar in that way, um,
yeah. So, anyway, regardless of how you think
of it, the Rules of Professional Conduct
basically are a set of rules governing
what lawyers can and can't do, uh, and, you
know, those rules are basically known to
all lawyers, they bind all lawyers
simply because they are lawyers in
California.
Yeah, so hopefully that made sense. The
Rules of Professional Conduct themselves
actually are put out by the California
State Bar and they are available online
for free so, uh, down in the description below
I'm going to go ahead and link the
website run by the California State Bar
that has the Rules of Professional
Conduct on them.
Now, I guess, this might sound a little
weird but I would encourage you to
actually go and read the Rules of
Professional Conduct for two reasons.
Number one is that the rules themselves
are written in plain English, I guess. The
thing is, you know, most people
when they read contracts or when they
read statutes and stuff, there's a
certain density like, you know, the words
are very big and the sentences run on
forever and stuff. So reading legal
documents is not something that
everybody can do. The Rules of
Professional Conduct do not read that
way. They're actually very easy to read.
I'm not sure if the subject matter will be
necessarily interesting to you, but, if
you can, like if you wanted, I would
certainly recommend that you go at least
look at the Rules of Professional
Conduct. You might be surprised at how
easy they are to read. The second thing
is that the Rules of Professional
Conduct, you would think there would be
tons of them like hundreds or thousands or
something.
There's really not that many. Uh,
they're not, that there's quite a
few, but there's not a humongous number, I
guess, and they're organized in a
fairly kind of easy to navigate sort of
way.
Yeah so, I guess, if you can follow all
of that, I guess, my explanation
for all that, I'm going to go ahead and
illustrate the point about the Rules of
Professional Conduct about what they cover,
the extent of what they cover, uh, by going
over three of them, in particular. So the
first rule we're going to go over is
rule 3-700(D) and, specifically, we're
over (D)(1) and (D)(2).
Uh, those rules basically say that
when an attorney-client relationship ends,
you know, when the representation ends, the
attorney is supposed to return promptly all
the clients files, all the clients
paperwork. That's ruled (D)(1) and all the
client's unused trust account money.
That's rule (D)(2). Uh, and the reason why that rule
is important, I guess, the reason, that's
the reason why I made this video, is that
I often see the situation where, you know,
the client in a situation like that
says, 'Well, you know, I let my lawyer go
because I couldn't afford him' or 'I let
lawyer go because I didn't like how she
was handling the case'. I found another
lawyer but this first lawyer won't
return my paperwork to me and the second
lawyer can't do anything because he
really needs to see the paperwork.
What am I supposed to do? I'm kind of
stuck between a rock and a hard place.
I'm very surprised, I guess is the
best word that that happens as often as I see
it because, you know, like I said, 3-
700(D)(1) and (D)(2) explicitly say that
when a representation ends, the prior
attorney has to return documents, has to
return files, has to return trust account
money in a very prompt manner. I
think, suffice it to say, not every lawyer
does that.
Yeah so, the second rule I'm going to go
over is 5- 320(E) and this rule
will probably make sense, make a lot of sense
to you if you've ever been on jury duty
before. The rule basically says that if
you're a lawyer, you are generally
forbidden from contact with a juror
even if it's on a case that you are not
on. So kind of the practical
day-to-day version of this is that
if you are a lawyer, generally do not
talk to jurors period. And the reason why
I think this might make sense to you if
you've ever had jury duty before is, I'm not
sure how they do it in other states but
in this part of California, what they do
when you have jury duty is they give you
this little green tag.
It just says 'JUROR' on it. And you clip it to
your shirt and they basically tell you
to wear that tag all the time
when you're on jury duty.
The reason you have to wear that tag
is that it basically marks you,
for lack of a better word, it marks you
so that all the lawyers kind of, you know,
roaming around the courthouse or
just kind of walking back and forth and
stuff. When they see you, they know you're
a juror and they were purposely not talk
to you.
Yeah, so that's what 5-320(E) says.
The last rule, rule number 3 that I'm going to go over
is Rule of Professional Conduct 2-100.
That rule basically said that if
you are an attorney in California, you
are generally forbidden from
communicating with a party that you know
to be represented. What does that mean? So what that
basically means is that if you are on a
case and the person on the other side of
that case, like if you're the plaintiff,
you know, the defendant, for example, has a
lawyer, then you as the plaintiff's
lawyer are not allowed to communicate
with the defendant directly, you must
communicate with the defendant's lawyer
instead. So that is, I guess, the way that
pops up the most, I guess, is that if you
are a lawyer. Sorry, let me back that up. If you are
the unrepresented party on the other
side and the other side's lawyer contacts
you, what that lawyer should generally
ask at the beginning is 'Hi,
do you have an attorney? Are you
represented?' and the reason they ask that is
so that they know 'Can I talk to you
directly or do I have to go through your
attorney?'
Yeah, so I guess, those rules that I went over
2-100, 5-320(E), and 3-700(D)(1) and (D)(2),
I just picked those random. Those are
the ones, I think, are the most common, I
suppose, the ones that kind of pop up the
most. There are a lot of other rules. Go
ahead and take a look at the website
down below and you should hopefully get
a full flavor of what the Rules of
Professional Conduct cover. So hopefully
alllll of that made sense.
I don't mean to make this video
confusing but the Rules of Professional
Conduct, I think, because they have that
consumer protection kind of, you know,
angle to them are important for, I think,
the general public to be aware of. In my
opinion, I think,
3-700(D)(1) and (D)(2) probably would be very,
very helpful to a lot of people
throughout California who are dealing
with lawyers
who they have terminated, but
will not return documents to them. Yeah. So,
again, hopefully all made sense.
Go ahead and like, share, subscribe
comment, etc and I will talk to you guys
next time. Thanks.
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