The American Bar Association's Model Rules of Professional Conduct (MRPC) are a set of rules and commentaries on the ethical and professional responsibilities of members of the legal profession in the United States. Although the MRPC generally is not binding law in and of itself, it is intended to be a model for state regulators of the legal profession (such as bar associations) to adopt, while leaving room for state-specific adaptations. All fifty states and the District of Columbia have adopted legal ethics rules based at least in part on the MRPC.
In almost all U.S. jurisdictions, prospective attorneys seeking admission to a state bar are typically required to demonstrate knowledge of the MRPC by achieving a sufficiently high score on the Multistate Professional Responsibility Examination.
Organization
The MRPC is organized into eight major categories of rules (numbered 1 through 8), each of which contains up to 18 individual rules within, numbered using a decimal point to denote the hierarchy and organization of rules.
The 8 major categories of rules are as follows:
In addition to the text of the rules, each rule is followed by a series of "Comments" which are not rules per se, but provide guidance to help attorneys interpret the rules.
History
The MRPC is part of a series of attempts by the American legal profession to develop a centralized authority on legal ethics.
Predecessors
In 1908, the ABA's Committee on Code of Professional Ethics delivered the "Canons of Professional Ethics," which set forth general principles and responsibilities for members of the legal profession. The Canons drew heavily from the Alabama State Bar Association's 1887 Code of Ethics. At the time, the Committee suggested "that the subject of professional ethics be taught in all law schools, and that all candidates for admission to the Bar be examined thereon."
Lewis F. Powell, Jr., then-President of the ABA (and later an Associate Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court), in 1964 asked that a Special Committee be formed to review the Canons. While the Canons were still viewed as "sound in substance," they had come to be seen as disorganized, dated, and "not an effective teaching instrument" for lawyers. The result of this effort was the Model Code of Professional Responsibility, which took effect in 1970. Although differently organized, the Code was substantively similar to the Canons.
The Kutak Commission
The 1970s saw the Watergate scandal, which led to the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon. Attorneys were involved in Watergate in many ways, leading to concerns that "the self-governance of the profession" was imperiled.
Motivated in part by this concern, in 1977 the American Bar Association (ABA) formed the Kutak Commission (formally the Commission on Evaluation of Professional Standards) for the purpose of evaluating the adequacy of the existing ethics rules, including the Model Code of Professional Responsibility. Chaired by Robert J. Kutak, co-founder of the law firm Kutak Rock LLP, the Commission set out "to develop professional standards that are comprehensive, consistent, constitutional and, most important, congruent with other law of which they are a part."
Finding it infeasible to modernize the rules via a set of amendments to the existing Model Code, the Commission developed various drafts of a new set of rules, and collecting feedback from a wide range of stakeholders. It issued a Proposed Final Draft in May 1981, which the ABA House of Delegates discussed and debated over the course of the following two years. With some amendments, the House of Delegates adopted the new Model Rules of Professional Conduct at its August 1983 annual meeting.
In the course of the drafting process and debate, the Kutak Commission recommended, and the House of Delegates approved, that for ease of use the MRPC be set forth in a format akin to the American Law Institute's Restatements of the Law with numbered rules and supplemental comments discussing each rule. The Commission argued that this format would be familiar to lawyers and would clearly delineate the "black-letter Rules" from the helpful but nonbinding "interpretive guidance" in the comments.
Amendments
After the 1983 adoption of the MRPC, the ABA's Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility has regularly reviewed the MRPC and proposed various amendments to the House of Delegates.