Zealous advocacy seems to have disappeared. The word “zeal” appears nowhere in the new New York Rules of Professional Conduct. It was there when the proposed rules were drafted by the New York State Bar Association’s Committee on Standards for Attorney Conduct; it was there when the proposed rules were adopted by the state bar in piecemeal fashion in 2006 and 2007; and it was there when the proposed rules were forwarded to the Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals and the four presiding Appellate Division judges for their final review and approval. But when that approval came in mid-December 2008, the word “zeal” had disappeared.
What happened? Somewhere along the line, the word “zeal” was removed from the only place it appeared in the proposed new rules, the Comment to Rule 1.3. The sentence in question, which was exactly the same as the corresponding sentence in the ABA’s Model Rules of Professional Conduct, originally read:
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