Ethics 2000: What Might Have Been

The Model Rules of Professional Conduct can perhaps be analogized to a modest house built in the early 1960s. The kitchen and bathroom were updated in the late 1970s, and the garage was converted into an extra room, but otherwise the house has remained unchanged. By the late 1990s, however, it became apparent that the occupants of the house had - along with their neighborhood - changed dramatically. The house no longer met their needs.

Clearly, what is needed is for the Commission to build a new house for the occupants to live in. Instead, the Commission is redecorating. It has perhaps, then, fallen to the interested bystanders to take the "steps back" that the Ethics 2000 Commission chose not to take, and to consider what sort of code of conduct lawyers need today, on the threshold of the Third Millennium.