Virginia State Bar's Standing Committee on Legal Ethics Seeking Public Comment on Legal Ethics Opinion 1826
(Submit comments no later than March 27, 2006)
Legal Ethics Opinions are written informal advisory opinions issued by the Standing Committee on Legal Ethics. A member of the bar may request a LEO by completing the "Legal Ethics Opinion Request Form," which is available for downloadfrom this Web site,* or you can contact Michelle Townsend at (804) 775-0557 or townsend@vsb.org and arrange to have the form faxed or mailed to you.
Downloadable Request Form for
Legal Ethics Opinion: This form is in Adobe pdf format. You may need to
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free Adobe Acrobat Reader to view and print this document. Once you have
downloaded and installed the Acrobat Reader, you can download the form and print
or view it.
*Request
for Legal Ethics Opinion (13.5 K PDF file)
LEOs are written based on a hypothetical
set of facts presented by the requesting attorney and reflect the judgment of
the committee. The opinions are not binding on any judicial or administrative
tribunal. A legal ethics opinion applies ethics rules to a hypothetical set
of facts and states whether the activity or conduct complies with or violates
such ethics rules. The committee will not decide questions of law nor make any
factual determinations. Also, the committee will not issue an opinion if a prior
LEO is dispositive of the inquiry. Finally, the committee may decline to issue
an opinion if the issue or question raised is the subject of collateral litigation
or a pending bar complaint.
Legal Ethics Opinions and Unauthorized
Practice of Law Opinions are published in two separate unnumbered volumes of
the Michie Code of Virginia (1991 and 1996 added volumes) and are supplemented
annually with a pocket part. In addition, the opinions are published as they
are issued in the Virginia Lawyer Register. The Geronimo Case Finder
and Michie's Law on Disk also include the LEOs in their CD-ROM libraries.
The Virginia LEOs are included in WestLaw's database. All information identifying
the requesting party is redacted prior to publication and such information is
kept confidential.
Legal Ethics Opinions Online
The full text of the LEOs beginning
with LEO 1360 (1990) to the most recent opinions may be found by clicking on
this link at the Virginia
CLE Home Page. This site includes a search engine to research LEOs by topic
and allows the user to look up an LEO by its number as well.
Thomas E. Spahn, Esquire, of
the law firm of McGuire, Woods, Battle & Boothe, LLP has undertaken a massive
project to summarize all of the legal ethics opinions in a user-friendly
database. Tom has organized these summaries under a list of eighty-six (86)
different topics. Click here to access Tom's
LEO Summaries. Thanks to Tom Spahn's tireless efforts, the bar now has
an extremely useful resouce on the Internet for researching legal ethics opinions.
Legal Ethics Hotline
Any member of the bar can seek an informal ethics or UPL opinion over the telephone from one of the Legal Ethics staff attorneys by calling the Ethics Hotline: (804) 775-0564. Your inquiry and identity will be kept confidential. Due to the high volume of calls, you may get a voice mail message instead of a live person, however, the staff strives to return these calls promptly. The Legal Ethics Hot Line is a consultation service for lawyers and judges only. Members of the public who have inquiries about the conduct or ethics of an attorney may file an inquiry with the Virginia State Bar or contact the Complaint Line at (804) 775-0570. more information
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