17 November 2003

Taz Wuz Here
That steam that you might see coming off your monitor is coming from my ears. Attorneys in multidisciplinary operations need to remember that, even when they are operating in discipline X—which may be completely unregulated—they are still subject to the disciplinary rules and requirements applicable to attorneys, especially when they rely upon their law licenses as means to attract business in that other discipline. I just got a letter today in a matter involving not one, not two, but three layers of attorneys in multidisciplinary operations that purported to respond to a complaint made by my client three years ago. The actual "response" is over a year old; and the letter I got today is six weeks after the most recent of four letters I sent, on letterhead, requesting the status of the complaint.

   Said multidisciplinary attorneys should be very happy that the applicable SOL is six years; if it had been one year, my client would have been out of luck. At least as to the top two layers, this wasn't even adversarial—they were supposed to be the "ombudsmanlike" organization resolving the underlying complaint! Nonetheless, this is going to require some serious consideration of my reporting obligations under IRPC 8.4 regarding out-of-state counsel.