Volume 4: Issue 2
After the 1999 Code Amendments: The Future of Ethics
On July 14, 1999, the presiding Justices of the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court issued a comprehensive set of amendments to the Disciplinary Rules of the Lawyers’ Code of Professional Responsibility. The amendments, which were effective immediately, help clarify and update existing provisions of the Code and eliminate or modify rules that no longer comport with the reasonable and legitimate expectations of clients, lawyers and society in general. Having spent the better part of seven years working toward the adoption of these amendments, I will leave to others more objective than I the task of their description and analysis. With the millennium approaching, however, it would seem appropriate to undertake a more fundamental examination of the way in which the legal profession is regulated and to try to develop a new framework that takes into account the broad and diverse nature of lawyers, clients and the practice of law.