Volume 96

By: Katelyn K. Leveque

The American Bar Association’s Model Rules of Professional Conduct (“Model Rules”) have long addressed conflicts of interest, with fluctuating degrees of stringency.1 For as long as the rules have been in place, legal scholars have grappled with how lawyers can work within the confines of the rules to serve their clients best, as well as how the rules might better align with what clients seek and expect from their legal representation. In their current form, the Model Rules address conflicts of interest in Rule 1.7. However, both this rule and the Model Rules more generally are not one size fits all. The Model Rules were written largely with litigators in mind, and thus applying them to transactional matters is often awkward and tenuous.2 In this Note, I will argue that Model Rule 1.7 should be amended to account for the differences in the ways that litigators and transactional attorneys should and do conceptualize conflicts of interest in their practices. Part I outlines the history of Rule 1.7 and its predecessors, and walks through Rule 1.7 and the comments as they exist today. Part II details the reasons that legal scholars argue Rule 1.7 is a valuable and necessary rule. Part III describes the incongruities between Rule 1.7’s parameters and the realities of transactional lawyering. Part IV discusses solutions that have been put forward to make up for the drawbacks of Rule 1.7 in its current iteration. Finally, Part V offers my proposed solution to the problem of applying Rule 1.7 to transactional matters: amend the rule and create subparts that pertain specifically to transactional lawyers, who have less need for a ban on conflicts of interest.

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