The American Bar Association's Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility has issued Formal Opinion 508 on the topic of the ethics of witness preparation (Opinion 508). Although the opinion does not break new ground, this is a subject of perennial importance, even more so in the age of remote proceedings, and it is worth considering it again in the light of this new offering.

The subject can be summed up by the following quotation from an article by Hal Lieberman in the New York Law Journal almost a quarter of a century ago ("Be Aware of Ethical Witness Preparation Rules," New York Law Journal, May 25, 2000), where he cited a New York Court of Appeals decision from 1880, In re Eldridge: a lawyer's duty is "to extract the facts from the witness, not pour them into him; to learn what the witness does know, not teach him what he ought to know."