Unlike federal or state rules of civil procedure or evidence, there are no hard-and-fast rules regarding how attorneys can and should handle referring clients to other attorneys and receiving referrals from those attorneys, save for some ethical considerations provided by rules of professional conduct and ethics opinions.

Without a common set of rules governing the sending and receiving of referrals, attorneys on either side of a referral relationship could have conflicting expectations of how a referred client’s matter will be handled, how to handle future matters related to that matter, and whether there will be continued referrals between the attorneys.