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Summary:
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On
December 11th the Supreme Court issued the following
order: The Arkansas Bar Association has petitioned
the Court to revise the Arkansas Rules of Professional
Conduct by replacing them with proposed rules patterned
on the latest version of the American Bar Association
Model Rules of Professional Conduct. The Arkansas
Bar Association through its Professional Ethics Committee
and the House of Delegates has reviewed the American
Bar Association's Model Rules and made some changes
culminating with the draft rules attached to its petition
filed with this Court. We thank the Arkansas Bar Association
for its work.
Today,
the Court publishes the Bar's proposed rules for comment.
The comment period shall end on February 11, 2004.
Comments should be sent to the Clerk of the Supreme
Court, Attention: Rules of Professional Conduct, Justice
Building, 625 Marshall, Little Rock, AR 72201.
Because
of their length, the proposed rules are notattached
to this per curiam order. They can be examined by
going to the Arkansas Bar Association's web site:
··_²-_http://www.arkbar.com.-_²_··http://www.arkbar.com.··_²-_-_²_··
("Proposed Ethics Rules"). This web site
contains a "red-lined" version showing how
the proposed rules differ from the current rules,
summaries, and links to the work of the American Bar
Association.
History:
The Board of Governors at its April meeting approved
in general the recommendations of the Professional
Ethics Committee. The House of Delegates considered
the proposal at its June 14, 2003 meeting in Hot Springs
and approved it with the only change being to Comment
7 of Rule 1.5. The Association proposal was submitted
on September 16, 2003 to the Supreme Court of Arkansas
for its consideration and action. Association members
with questions are welcome to contact any of the committee
members listed below. A link to the Association Petition
is provided below.
2002-03 President Murray
Claycomb of the Arkansas Bar Association charged the
Professional Ethics Committee with reviewing the recommendations
of the American Bar Association that the Model Rules
of Professional Conduct be updated. Our Committee
has produced red lined copies showing how its recommendations
would differ from the current Arkansas Rules. These
files use the legislative style to show changes, wherein
stricken language would be deleted from and the
underlined language would be added to the Arkansas
Rules of Professional Conduct as they currently exist.
Our Committee used the
American Bar Association recommendations as its starting
point for amending the Arkansas Rules which initially
became effective January 1, 1986. Unless it felt there
was a good reason to do otherwise, such as the Arkansas
Supreme Court has recently amended our Rules, it adopted
the American Bar recommended changes. The Board of
Governors will consider the Committee's report in
April and the House of Delegates will consider it
in June. If the House approves petitioning the Arkansas
Supreme Court to make Rules changes, a petition will
be filed with the Court on behalf of the Arkansas
Bar Association.
The 2002-03 Professional
Ethics Committee was Chaired by John Lile. Other Committee
Members were:
Howard Brill D.
Price Marshall, Jr. Floyd
M. Thomas, Jr.
Bettina Brownstein William
A. Martin Paul
D. Waddell
Carolyn J. Clegg Lucinda
McDaniel Eddie
H. Walker, Jr.
Brad Hendricks Richard
A. Reid Bruce
R. Wilson
Stark Ligon Michelle
Strause
The Committee spend
over 13 hours in Committee meetings in October and
December, 2002, and January and March, 2003, plus
numerous hours of individual effort between meetings,
reviewing the Rules and Comments and formulating its
recommendations.
The American Bar Association
Ethics 2000 Commission report and a large amount of
related material can be found at http://www.abanet.org/cpr/ethics2k.html
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