TLIE Top Tip: Should I Stay, or Should I Go, Part II
TLIE Top TipsPreviously, in Part I of our TLIE Top Tip: Should I Stay or Should I Go, we discussed the requirement that clients who follow a lawyer to a new firm must enter into a new legal services agreement. This Part II highlights the second duty–to inform the client of any continuing obligations under the client’s existing agreement with the old firm.
As noted in Professional Ethics Committee Opinion 700, the obligations may be contractual or financial and arise acutely in the contingency fee context. For example, a client may be subject to paying two contingency fees when, while under a contingency fee agreement with one firm, he follows a lawyer to a new firm under a new contingency fee agreement (in effect, terminating the prior firm without cause). The lawyer should disclose this double-fee possibility, and the lawyer’s knowing failure to disclose it could result in a violation of TDRPC 8.04(a)(3), which prohibits conduct involving “dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation.”
