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The Virginia State Bar

Professional Guidelines

Home > Actions on Rule Changes and Legal Ethics Opinions > amendment to Rule 1.10 regarding conflict of interest.

Adopted | amendment to Rule 1.10 regarding conflict of interest. Approved by the Supreme Court of Virginia 07/31/2015. Effective immediately.

View the Current Rule

view order from the Supreme Court of Virginia, issued 07/31/2015 (PDF file)

RULE 1.10

This Rule amendment is intended to avoid a situation in which a lawyer avoids the imputation of a conflict of interest by avoiding the knowledge that another lawyer in the firm has a conflict as to the representation. Under the current standard of “knowing” that another lawyer in the firm is prohibited from undertaking the representation, a lawyer can avoid the application of Rule 1.10(a), which would impute a conflict to him, by willfully failing to learn the information that establishes the existence of the conflict. The Rule amendment imputes a conflict if the lawyer “knows or reasonably should know” that another lawyer in the firm is prohibited from representing the client. The amendment adds a new Comment [2a] to explain that the failure to maintain or use a system for identifying conflicts may be deemed a violation of Rule 1.10(a), if proper use of the system would have identified the conflict.

Updated: January 5, 2017