RealAudio 3.0

Attorneys have long touted a code of ethics they say rises above other professions such as accounting or banking. That code includes a rule that bans them from entering into partnerships with other professions.

But now a commission of the American Bar Association wants to scrap that century-old rule; an action some critics say strikes at the very heart of the legal profession's independence.

RIGHT NOW THE ONLY PEOPLE that own law firms are lawyers. But under the Bar's proposal, non-lawyer professionals including accountants and financial planners could acquire law practices by bringing lawyers into their partnerships.

That scares Larry Fox of Philadelphia's Drinker, Biddle and Reath. He's also former chair of the American Bar Association's Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility. Fox says the reason behind the rule is to protect clients from influence on legal matters from non-lawyers.

	For More Information See the ABA's background paper. Read the ABA's full report to its delegates on the subject.

Fox: The profession is a little bit like the priesthood and there are obligations that are placed on lawyers. We've got pro-bono responsibility to provide services for the indigent, we've got obligations of confidentiality that are unique, we've got an attorney client privilege that's right up there with the priest penitent privilege, we've got duties of loyalty to our clients that are extremely important and almost sacred.

Nelson: The fact is: life has gotten more complicated, law has gotten more intertwined with other disciplines. And there's no question that the intellectual premise that the world is more interdisciplinary is a correct one. And it is also clear that people in many cases do prefer to have someone who can provide a complete service as opposed to saying here's the legal answer to your question but you'll have to ask someone else how to value this business.

Swinehart: Let's assume you're a large multi-national company based in the Twin Cities whether that be 3M or Honeywell or Cargill. They have operations all over the world and to the extent that they can go to one service provider for a broad array of services, that reduces the transaction costs for them, reduces the number of communications that have to occur. Our profession and the other big 5 have worked hard to provide global seamless service to our multi-national clients. I believe that the legal profession could benefit from that as well.

Fox: Money is power and if all the lawyers end up working for non-lawyers and if the law business becomes just another profit center in a practice that includes accounting, investments and insurance, the power will reside in the people who run the enterprise regardless of what rules we have and those people will be running enterprises are not schooled in, not sensitive to or not responsible for our rules.

Luban: This is a major change in the practice of the way can be organized because the distinctiveness of lawyers against CPA's, against tax accountants, against bankers, financial advisors, it begins to be lost. They become all-purpose business transaction engineers.

Ryan: If you look at American Express, Larson and Weisher - who I work for - or a law firm, we're going to look a lot alike in the end. And I think it's going to be harder to differentiate who does what because we're all going to be competitors. To the extent that the entities providing the services become larger, I think the personal customization could be lost for the individual consumer. At the same time, what we've found and what the studies show is that consumers would rather one-stop shop than go to a lot of different places to fulfill their needs.

Abel: These developments are occurring throughout much of the advanced capitalist world. There are striking exceptions which is Japan which has a very different legal system, very different legal profession, but throughout western Europe and the Anglophone world I expect these developments to occur very rapidly.