The American Bar Association’s (ABA’s) Mode Rules for Professional Conduct state, in the section about Conflicts of Interest:
A lawyer shall not have sexual relations with a client unless a consensual sexual relationship existed between them when the client-lawyer relationship commenced. Rule 1.8(j)
(Interesting side note: this is the only conflict that is not imputed to all members of a firm (Rule 1.8(k)) — so feel free to bang your partner’s clients)
Apparently, there is no such restriction in England. However, as this story demonstrates, you may have a problem if you bill for the time you spend “servicing” your client’s needs.
Best line ever from a legal news story:
Her claim states that under the advice agreement, in addition to a fixed fee arrangement for £120,000, Beaumont could charge her for unforeseen and urgent work, and that she was surprised to discover when he billed her that some of the “urgent work” was actually for time when she had personal reason to know he was not thrusting himself into a law book.
H/T @kevinokeefe
This story was originally published on The Legal Satyricon.
