Legal Ethics
Running for Election Requires Attorney to Disclose Client List, Law Dean Says
Posted May 1, 2009 12:56 PM CST
By Martha Neil
Should a lawyer running for election as city attorney have to disclose to the public a list of the clients he represented in private practice?
There's only one answer to that question: Yes, writes Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the new law school at the University of California at Irvine, in a Los Angeles Times op-ed piece.
Sparked by a controversy over exactly that disclosure issue in the current campaign for Los Angeles city attorney, his column says that no attorney-client privilege attaches to the simple fact of whether a lawyer represented a particular person.
Voters have a legitimate need to know about a candidate's client list, in order to determine whether potential conflicts are likely to require retention of expensive outside counsel, Chemerinsky writes. And "there is no way to evaluate whether a candidate has a potential conflict without disclosure of prior clients."
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Comments
S.L. Gans, Esq.
May 1, 2009 8:00 PM CST
This is a CLASSIC “red herring” issue being raised by candidate Jack Weiss, who has not practiced law in many years and has no accomplishments of his own during his term as a member of L.A.‘s City Council - - except to have earned the disrespect and disapproval of the heads of every homeowners association in his district, for his relentless pro-developer stance and the havoc he has wrought with his abuse of L.A.‘s zoning laws and regulations. Weiss is harping on this issue because he can’t find anything bad to say about the unimpeachable record of his opponent, Carmen Trutanich, and he can’t find anything truthful to say about his own accomplishments that would make anyone want to vote for him! The public is sick of hearing Weiss harp on this issue and of his ugly, negative campaign, which has been funded largely by wealthy real estate developers and billboard companies, and their law firms. At least Trutanich IS a lawyer (and a VERY well-respected, conscientious, successful and highly-rated lawyer at that) and actually HAS clients and knows what it means to REPRESENT his clients, unlike Weiss, who has completed failed to represent the constituents who have the misfortune of living in his Council District.
Sincerely,
- “Burned by Weiss” resident of L.A. Council District 5
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John Steele
May 4, 2009 7:30 AM CST
Dean Chemerinsky’s article is based on a classic mistake. It’s erroneous. To follow the correct analysis, you might visit the Legal Ethics Forum, where a number of professors (and some adjuncts like myself) are in agreement that Dean Chemerinsky erred.
http://www.legalethicsforum.com/blog/2009/05/chemerinsky-on-concealing-a-clients-identity-.html#comments
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