In these unprecedented times, when law-school graduates face bar exam delays due to measures taken in response to COVID-19, law firms employing recent graduates may wonder: what work can they do? Practice
The Illinois State Bar Association (“ISBA”) released a Professional Conduct Advisory Opinion that answers this very question. According to the opinion, law firms can give associate-level work, other than appearing in legal proceedings, to law school graduates who have been impacted by the bar exam delay. However, graduates must be supervised by licensed lawyers and the graduate’s status cannot be false or misleading.
This conclusion is in line with ABA rule 5.5, 5.3, and other bar associations such as the Pennsylvania Bar. Specifically, Comment 2 to Rule 5.5 states that this rule “does not prohibit a lawyer from employing the services of para-professionals and delegating functions to them, so long as the lawyer supervises the delegated work and retains responsibility for their work.” The graduates would be considered “para-professionals” in this case.
Furthermore, Rule 5.3 allows lawyers to employ nonlawyer assistants in their practice as long as the supervising lawyers make reasonable efforts to ensure that the nonlawyer (or recent graduate) assistant’s conduct is compatible with the professional obligations of the lawyer. Finally, as per ISBA Advisory Opinion 87-1, lawyers or law firms employing recent graduates should make sure that any communications regarding the graduate’s status are neither false nor misleading.
Read the full opinion here.
