Opinion 1708

I have been instructed by the Rules of Professional Conduct Committee to respond to your inquiry regarding the ethical implications involved in administering a volunteer lawyer program ("Program"), an arm of a county bar association. This Program is designed to provide indigent members of the public general information required in dissolutions or, in more complex cases, referring those individuals to qualified, competent lawyers who have agreed to volunteer their time. The legal advice comes from the lawyers and not from the staff. The staff's job is to screen the applicants to insure that they meet the basic qualifications for the Program and to make the referrals to the appropriate part of the Program.

The referral nature of the Program has two parts. If the individual has only a few questions, he or she is referred to an attorney who is participating in [a specific clinic.] This means the individual will be given up to one hour of legal advice from an independent attorney who is participating in the clinic. There is a small charge made for that referral. If it appears that the person has a more difficult problem which needs ongoing legal services, that person is then referred to a pro bono attorney, again, who is independent of the Program. It is the independent lawyer who provides the legal advice. The Clinic is the device which screens and refers the individuals determining whether or not the people meet the financial thresholds for pro bono services.

In answer to the first part of your inquiry regarding the ethical implications involved in administering the Program, it is the Committee’s opinion that as long as the Program is simply providing administrative services and that all legal advice is being rendered by independent lawyers who are responsible for checking for conflicts of interest, there is no violation of any of the RPCs. However, if staff members of the Program are engaged in rendering individual legal advice, then the Program would be subject to the RPCs as any other group that practices law would be.

With regard to your information forms and conducting the Dissolution Seminars, assuming that appropriate disclosures are made so that those people understand that the person conducting the Seminar is not their attorney and that anything stated in that Seminar is not subject to attorney/client privilege, it is the Committee’s opinion that the giving of seminars is not necessarily the practice of law, and would not be subject to the RPCs.

In answer to the question regarding an employee of the Program who may be an attorney, the Committee believes that it would constitute a conflict of interest for that person to act as Guardian ad Litem in a case where one of the parties had gone through the Program. The Committee also cautions that if that attorney were to be acting in the capacity of the attorney during other parts of the Program, i.e., conducting Clinic or acting as pro bono counsel, that could change the character of the program from that of being a referral service to an actual provider of legal services, in which case the RPCs, particularly RPC 1.7(a) and (b), would come into play