No Endorsement of Clients

No Endorsement of Clients

Rule 1.2(b) settles what the act of representing a client says about the lawyer: "A lawyer's representation of a client, including representation by appointment, does not constitute an endorsement of the client's political, economic, social or moral views or activities."¹ The other paragraphs of Rule 1.2 govern the inside of the relationship. They divide decisions between lawyer and client, permit limits on scope, and mark where a client's objectives must stop. Paragraph (b) looks outward. It keeps the lawyer's professional role apart from the lawyer's own convictions, so that observers see a lawyer serving a client and not joining a cause.

Consider what would follow if observers could read a representation as agreement. A lawyer who took an unpopular client would carry the reputational cost of positions the lawyer may reject, and lawyers who weighed that cost would decline the very clients who most need someone to speak for them in court. Appointed counsel make the point plainest. A judge, not the lawyer, chose the client, and holding the lawyer to the client's views would punish compliance with the assignment. That is why the rule names appointments expressly, and it is why the rule removes the cost at its source: the act of representing carries no message of agreement.

Exam questions on this rule typically describe public criticism of a lawyer for taking a disliked client and ask what the lawyer did wrong. Ask one thing: does the lawyer's conduct include anything beyond the representation itself? If the only fact is that the lawyer took the matter, the lawyer has endorsed nothing. The rule protects the representation. It does not protect a separate statement of support that the lawyer chooses to add.

Paragraph (b) answers one narrow question, which is what the representation communicates. It does not widen what a lawyer may do for a client, so the limits on client objectives discussed earlier in this chapter apply in full.

Paragraph (b) pairs naturally with the scope power in paragraph (c). Because representing a client carries no endorsement, the client's views alone give the lawyer no reason to fear taking the matter. The lawyer may still find one particular means repugnant. Rule 1.2(c) offers a path between performing that means and declining the whole engagement: a lawyer may limit the scope of the representation if the limitation is reasonable under the circumstances and the client gives informed consent.² The lawyer who objects to one tactic can propose to leave it out and take the rest.

Read together, the two paragraphs give the lawyer two distinct tools. Paragraph (b) removes the stigma that might otherwise keep a lawyer from a disliked client. Paragraph (c) lets the lawyer set aside a specific means by agreement, without abandoning the client. The second tool has two conditions, and both must be met: a client's signature cannot rescue a limit that is unreasonable under the circumstances.