Ethics Forum: Questions and Answers on Professional Responsibility
Is there a different standard for conflict of interest for a district attorney than for other attorneys?
May 21, 2020 at 11:42 AM
11 minute read
It is never a good idea to have different standards of conduct for attorneys just because of their occupation.
Is there a different standard for conflict of interest for a district attorney than for other attorneys?
Samuel C. Stretton.
This question is an interesting one. As this writer has discussed in other articles, the basic conflict of interest rules for attorneys are found in Rule 1.7 (the general conflict of interest rule), Rule 1.8 (the special conflict of interest rule), and Rule 1.9 (the prior client conflict of interest rule). All of these rules are in the Pennsylvania Rules of Professional Conduct.
Before 1987, the disciplinary rules for attorneys had included as part of conflict of interest the appearance of impropriety standard. This was later written out of the current Rules of Professional Conduct because many people believed that it was misused by the courts. Many people believed disqualifying an attorney for a conflict under some vague standard of appearance of impropriety was a mentally lazy method without doing a more stringent analysis. As a result, in the Code of Professional Conduct, there is no appearance of impropriety standard for conflict of interest for attorneys or for disqualification of an attorney.
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