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Last updated on Tuesday, April 10, 2018
(INDIANAPOLIS) - For the first time, the Indiana Supreme Court Disciplinary Commission will undertake an advisory role to lawyers.
The Commission will provide ethical guidance through formal written advisory opinions and informal individual guidance. Both are aimed to prevent ethical mishaps and enhance the overall professionalism of the Indiana Bar which includes about 20,000 lawyers.
The Commission will offer formal written opinions which will be published on the Supreme Court's website and serve to educate the entire bar. The Commission issued its first opinion answering the question of whether a lawyer can participate in an online legal referral service where the lawyer must pay a marketing fee for each service completed.
The Commission will provide informal individual guidance to lawyers through the Indiana Court's Portal. The informal guidance directed to an individual lawyer will be confidential, based on a given set of facts, and will never be published.
The five justices of the Indiana Supreme Court are ultimately responsible for deciding whether a lawyer has committed ethical misconduct and what (if any) sanction is warranted. The Court's Disciplinary Commission is the agency responsible for investigating and prosecuting allegations of attorney misconduct. Each year the Commission receives about 1,500 complaints. The overwhelming majority (82%) are dismissed as having no valid issue of misconduct, but in about one hundred cases each year, the Commission takes action, and the Supreme Court sanctions a lawyer.
In 2017, the Court convened a task force to investigate the feasibility of formal advisory opinions and informal individual advice related to lawyer ethics. The task force made a series of recommendations, and the Court directed the Commission to implement the advisory process.
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