by Matt Barr

Harvard needs a legal ethics class

The case of Catholic Charities getting out of the adoption business in Massachusetts is terribly sad, and there are no winners. (It is a federal requirement that a commentator saying so acknowledge that the anti-gay side in the gay adoption debate is harmful to children, but I'm going to ask only Ohioans to read this post so I can say what I think without having to worry about seeming insufficiently cosmopolitan.)

The most interesting twist here, to me -- sue me -- is that Boston's prestigious firm Ropes & Gray kicked Catholic Charities to the curb as a client after firm higher-ups met with a representative of Harvard Law School's group for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender students. The firm had been working on Catholic Charities' behalf to try and negotiate a religious exemption from state law requiring nondiscrimination against gay couples in adoption. A week after the firm cut its client loose, the announcement was made that Catholic Charities wasn't going to facilitate any adoptions in Massachusetts anymore. Details here in the Boston Globe, and thorough discussion here and here by Prof. Heriot at The Right Coast.

"The firm declined to comment on how much influence Harvard law students had," the Globe reports. Prof. Heriot, and I, find it startling the firm didn't deny the meeting had any influence. Letting anyone, law students or anyone else, muscle you into ditching a client is reprehensible. As is discussed at Volokh here and in the comments, you have no obligation to represent anyone (absent a court appointment) in the first place, but having undertaken to represent it, you stick with it. Jim Lindgren notes: A firm would be "ethically required to withdraw from representation" if their disagreement with a client rose "to such a level of repulsion that they can no longer adequately represent" it. Yes, as with most things in the law, particularly rules governing lawyer behavior, there are nooks and crannies, but they don't apply here.

It surprisingly took over two hours from the Volokh post for someone to cleverly comment that refusing to facilitate interracial adoption, or non-Christian adoption, or adoption by Libras, would be wrong. Somehow, the debate continued, though. Since any unpopular client deserves a lawyer's most zealous advocacy, here's the more appropriate analogy. Imagine a Catholic diocese convinced a lawyer in a prosecution under South Dakota's new abortion law to ditch the defendant. I think in that case the outrage would be commensurate with the offense. In fact, there would be a great, annoying clamor to be sure that Catholic lawyers were forced to take the case in the first place, not just that they be sure not to quit in the middle.

But realistically, Ropes & Gray, a powerful firm which recruited 17 Harvard students in a recent cycle to three for the firm with the next most, isn't going to be hurt financially by this, and likely doesn't care if anyone thinks its commitment to legal ethics is lacking. Opprobrium here is more constructively sent the way of the law students who planned to protest and sabotage Ropes & Gray's recruitment efforts and who urged it to stop representing its client. They (one can hope) may be in a position where their impulse to put their interests ahead of clients' may hit them in the wallet someday.

If, that is, they haven't proven themselves Ropes & Gray material already.

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