Model Rule 6.4: Law Reform Activities Affecting Client Interests

When it applies

This comes up when lawyers volunteer with bar associations, legislative drafting committees, or public interest organizations working on law reform, and one of the lawyer's clients has a stake in the outcome. On the MPRE, it tests whether students recognize that participation is permitted and that disclosure to the organization (not client consent or withdrawal) is the required response.

What the rule requires

• A lawyer may actively participate in organizations engaged in law reform, including serving as an officer, director, or in other leadership roles.
• Such participation is permitted even though the reform activity may affect the interests of a client of the lawyer.
• If the lawyer knows that a client's interests may be materially benefited by a decision in which the lawyer participates, the lawyer must disclose that fact to the organization.
• Disclosure need not reveal the client's identity, only the fact that a client's interests may be materially benefited.
• The lawyer need not abstain from voting or otherwise participating merely because of this incidental benefit to a client.

Exceptions

• Disclosure is only triggered when the lawyer knows (actual knowledge, which may be inferred from circumstances) that a client's interests may be materially benefited. The benefit need not be certain, but a benefit the lawyer does not know about does not trigger the duty.
• No disclosure obligation arises if the lawyer does not participate in the decision in question.

How the MPRE tests Model Rule 6.4

• Students often think this rule requires client consent or recusal like a conflicts rule (1.7); it does not. It only requires disclosure to the organization, not disclosure to the client or consent from the client.
• The disclosure trigger is actual knowledge ("knows"), not "reasonably should know." However, knowledge can be inferred from circumstances, and what the lawyer must know is only that the client's interests may be materially benefited. Certainty that the benefit will occur is not required.
• Students confuse this with Rule 1.7 client conflicts; 6.4 is about the lawyer's institutional/organizational role, not a lawyer-client relationship with the reform group.
• MPRE questions may test whether the lawyer must disclose the client's name. The rule only requires disclosing the fact of the benefit, not identity.