Speaker 1: This is a lecture for my professional responsibility class. We're near the very end of the group of rules under 1.8 which are about lawyer conflicts and in this particular lecture we're going to be talking about imputation, 1.8 K, imputation. I have a slide up here that's showing a mash-up photo from President George W Bush and Barack Obama. When we have a live class when I'm teaching this I then have some fun with the students kind of make a lot a lot of noise when I first put this up and then I ask people which president they saw first when they looked at this. But the picture provides kind of a nice metaphor for what we're talking about and this is a very very important concept for conflicts of interest that's not only going to apply to 1.8 it applies to 1.7 and 1.9 and we're going to have a whole rule about dealing with imputation with 1.10. This is the first time we're really talking about it if you're going through these lectures in order. What we're basically saying is if you have a conflict we're going to impute your conflict to everybody else in the firm and so we're going to look at everybody else with kind of your conflict imputed on to them. Here we are with 1.8 K. While lawyers are associated in a firm a prohibition in the foregoing paragraphs A through I that applies to any one of them shall apply to all of them. This means that everything except for the rule right before this is subsection right before this which is about having sex with clients. So let's pick the big one A business transactions with a client is going to apply to everybody in the firm even if only one lawyer is representing this client in a matter. We only have a one comment about this. This is comment 20. Under paragraph K a prohibition on conduct by an individual lawyer in paragraphs A through I also applies to all lawyers associated in the firm with the personally prohibited lawyer. This is merely restating the rule. For example here's our example one lawyer in a firm may not enter into a business transaction with a client of another member of the firm without complying with paragraph A even if the first lawyer is not personally involved in the representation of the client. And so in other words if another lawyer in your firm is representing a client let's say in a divorce or something like that and you work for that firm if you're going to do buy a house or buy a car from your colleagues client you're going to have to satisfy all of the disclosure and documentation writing and signature requirements of 1.8 a for business transactions with clients. Now the prohibition set forth in paragraph J which is I have in all caps no sex with clients is personal and is not applied to associated lawyers. In other words if you can't if another lawyer in your firm is representing someone you can sleep with their clients or if you get sexually involved with your client we can have another lawyer in your firm take over that case and they can represent that client and you could in theory continue with the representation. Now I have a little bit of life advice for my students if you're watching this. This is not going to play well for you with other people in your firm that you're asking them to take over your clients because you keep sleeping with them. And so people are going to be talking about you behind your back it doesn't reflect well on you and so forth that you're really just better off finding other people to have relationships with than the people you're representing while you're representing them. And so it is going to create all kinds of problems for you in your professional life if you insist on sleeping with your clients. Okay here's our quick review question if you need to document that you watch this video. A client and her attorney become close as they are working on the client's divorce case. The client offers to sell a parcel of real estate to another lawyer in the attorney's firm. I kind of threw you off there. Would the attorney who is not representing the client need to follow the disclosure requirements of 1.8 a yes or no? Hopefully you know the answer to that from watching this video if not I would encourage you to review the video so that you're clear on this.