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view Supreme Court Petition of proposed amendments to Rules 1.9 and 1.11 (pdf)
Pursuant to Part Six: Section IV, Paragraph 10(g) of the Rules of the Supreme Court of Virginia, the Virginia Supreme Court is expected to consider for approval, disapproval, or modification, an amendment to Rules 1.9 & 1.11 of the Rules of Professional Conduct proposed by the Standing Committee on Legal Ethics and approved by the Council of the Virginia State Bar on March 1, 2008.
RULE 1.9 AND 1.11
The Virginia State Bar’s Standing Committee on Legal Ethics (“Committee”) proposes an amendment to Rule 1.11 which addresses the special conflicts of interest for former and current government officers and employees. It came to the attention of the Committee that Comment [10] to Rule 1.11 deals with the issue of disqualification of other lawyers in the agency when one of the lawyers is disqualified from a matter. The Committee believes that since Comment [10] deals with a substantive issue of lawyer conduct, it should be directly incorporated into the rule instead of a comment, as comments are meant to provide guidance to lawyers rather than to direct their conduct. The Committee does not propose to modify the rule to the extent that other lawyers in the agency are not disqualified, even if the lawyer in question is disqualified, but simply proposes to move this language directly into Rule 1.11 and by adding subsection (3) to section (d) of the Rule to more accurately reflect this directive.
In addition, the Committee proposes amending Rule 1.9 to include complementary language that provides direction to lawyers regarding law firm disqualifications when lawyers move from private to public employment. The Committee added this direction to Comment [5] of Rule 1.9.
Inspection and Comment
The proposed amendment may be inspected at the office of the Virginia State Bar, 707 East Main Street, Suite 1500, Richmond, Virginia 23219-2800, between the hours of 9:00 a.m. and 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday. Copies of the proposed amendment can be obtained from the offices of the Virginia State Bar by contacting the Office of Ethics Counsel at 804-775-0557, or can be found at the Virginia State Bar’s Web site at http://www.vsb.org.
Any individual, business or other entity may file or submit written comments in support of, or in opposition to, the proposed amendment by filing nine copies with the Clerk of the Court and three copies with Karen A. Gould, the Executive Director of the Virginia State Bar, not later than April 30, 2008.
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