Bruce Green, director of Fordham Law School’s Louis Stein Center for Law and Ethics, was quoted in a Law360 article about the controversy surrounding Fifth Third Bank and its decision to fire its former General Counsel Heather Russell.
Green told Law360 that it is hard to tell why Russell was fired because the situation appeared to be governed by the company’s internal conflict of interest and disclosure policies. The issue does not appear to be one of legal ethics.
Green also said that in-house lawyers are not generally held to higher ethical standards within companies, although they must comply with both internal policies and their bar associations’ professional conduct rules.
It has not been alleged that Russell violated any rules of professional conduct. The American Bar Association’s model rules prohibit the representation of a client “if the representation involves a concurrent conflict of interest,” including if the representation is limited by a personal interest of the lawyer. However, it provides that lawyers may still represent clients if the lawyer reasonably believes that he or she can provide competent and diligent representation to all affected clients and if the clients give consent.
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“Beyond that, it would be a matter of internal policy whether they have different rules for lawyers or general counsel than they do for others,” Green said. “It may be that in this case — to the extent the relationship predated her employment with the bank or began after — that under the bank’s rules she had to disclose [the relationship], but who knows?”