ALPS In Brief – Episode 61: A Dirty Little Secret About Conflict Resolution Claims

<p>ALPS Risk Manager Mark Bassingthwaighte shares the illuminating story of a law firm, their longstanding wealthy client who couldn’t close the deal on a massive project that would have netted the law firm millions in billables, and the unfortunate circumstances that followed when the firm moved the project forward with a different client to secure the payout.</p> <p>Transcript:</p> <p>Mark Bassingthwaighte:</p> <p>Hello, I'm Mark Bassingthwaighte and welcome to another episode of ALPS In Brief, the podcast that comes to you from the historic Florence building in beautiful downtown Missoula, Montana. I have had a couple of calls of late and they are not out of the ordinary in terms of the topics that are being discussed but it got me to thinking. And I wanted to share a claim story that goes back quite a few years but it's one of my favorite stories for a number of reasons. A lot of the calls that I take have to do with conflicts of interest and just exploring. Sometimes it's not clear who the client is and you work through that and you can figure out the conflict issue and resolve some things. Sometimes it's just a lawyer looking at a matter wanting to stay in or wondering if he or she can even take a case.</p> <p>So it's fun and at times just crazy in terms of how complex certain situations can get trying to work through all the issues. But I wanted to share a conflict story again because I've had a number of calls. And of late, the issue really has been, what rule are we in? Is it a current client matter in terms of 1.7 or is it a past client situation rule 1.9? And it's interesting because 1.7 is a bit more restrictive. And 1.9, if we can get there is a little more permissive in terms of allowing attorneys some additional options in terms of whether they can stay in or can take a new matter on, that kind of thing.</p> <p>So let me get to my story. There's just some interesting learnings out of it. The gist of it is there's a larger firm that had a senior partner, I would call this individual rainmaker,