Lawyers representing indigent clients free of charge are now enabled to offer them money when they are experiencing an emergency.
On Nov. 23, the Missouri Supreme Court created an exception to Rule 4-1.8, which removes a conflict of interest around financial transactions between attorneys and their clients.
“Our clients are by the very nature of us representing them are low-income individuals,” said Dan Glazier, executive director of Legal Services of Eastern Missouri. “We have income eligibility requirements to receive our services, which are free if you meet our income guidelines. When you are a low-income person, you always have challenges and needs. The reason often that they seek a lawyer is because they are in a legal challenge and lack resources. Rent would be a good example or not having enough money to put food on the table.”
As a result of the exception, attorneys like Glazier, nonprofit legal services, pro bono programs, public interest organizations, and law school clinics can conditionally offer emergency financial assistance to the client, whether monetary or in-kind, for food, housing, transportation, medicine, and other basic necessities, according to media reports.
“Our clients face health and life-threatening circumstances all of the time,” Glazier told the St. Louis Record. “Being homeless is life-threatening. Not having the resources to get medical assistance is life-threatening. Being in a domestic violence circumstance where you and your kids might face bodily harm is life-threatening. So, these circumstances are certainly not unusual for our client population.”
Caveats include lawyers cannot promise money before they are formally hired, cannot use financial payouts as a way to extend representation, cannot demand a refund, and cannot use cash gifts as an incentive to attract clients in promoting their legal services to potential new clients.
“Our primary goal is to raise the resources that will allow us to staff the work that we do so that we can provide the high-quality representation that our clients deserve,” Glazier added. “We can now also have a fund and even do potentially some fundraising to have that kind of funding pot to use to give to clients in these limited financial emergency circumstances.”
The state’s highest court announced the reform six months after Glazier sent a letter bringing the issue to their attention.
“We laid out the challenges and they responded,” he said. “Our initial purpose was to allow for an exception for legal aid-type, public interest law programs who have these kinds of clients. Those are the clients we have but, on their own, the Supreme Court expanded it, which I think is a good move, to make it eligible for any lawyer who is representing a client pro bono.”