Ethics

I''ve been speaking about this case, and am glad to see that the Hinshaw firm has featured it in one of their Alerts.  In a case where a big firm and a big corporate client negotiated over the retention letter, the court treated both sides as adults.  

When the corporate client struck the "one client" clause in the firm's agreement but didn't substitute "all affiliates are treated like clients" language, the court didn't assume all affiliates were clients.  And when the firm represented a sophisticated trade group, the court didn't automatically assume that the firm represented all the members of the group.  As I've argued elsewhere (Corporate Affiliate Conflicts: a Reasonable Expectation Test, 29 W. State U. L. Rev. 283 (2002)), court should not just enforce agreements on this point between big firms and big corporations, but should also send the signal that they expect the firms and clients to formalize their agreement on that point rather than be coy about it and then ask the court to read the silence in favor of one party or the other.