THE misadventures of Arnie Becker, a slick-haired divorce lawyer with piercing blue eyes and a penchant for seducing his clients, kept viewers of “LA Law” entertained for nearly a decade. If Mr Becker were real, he would be nervous. California’s bar association, the largest in the country, is considering a crackdown on sexual relationships between lawyers and their clients.
In 1992 California became the first state to implement a formal rule about client-lawyer sexual conduct. Rule 3-120 barred lawyers from using their position of power to coerce their clients into sleeping with them. At the time, recalls Larry Doyle, who served as chief legislative counsel for the State Bar of California when the rule was enacted, other states mocked California for creating what they saw as a superfluous guideline. Forcing anyone to have sex—client or otherwise—was already expressly illegal. “There was a fair amount of tittering and states saying, “This is so California,” Mr Doyle remembers.
Today California has some of the laxest rules on the subject in the country. In 2000 the national...Continue reading
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