1965-08.

• Court: Indiana

Indiana Ethics Opinion 1965. 1965-08. Opinion No. 08 of 1965Opinion No. 8 of 1965Use Of Law Firm Name For Other Business Unethical Rules For Maintaining Separate Business EnunciatedThe Legal Ethics Committee was asked whether a law firm could conduct an insurance agency, an abstract company, a collection agency, a real estate brokerage office or any other type of business, using the name of the law firm, and whether the late firm may retain the name of a former partner after his decease. The use of a late firm name for any other business, occupation or profession is unethical. Guidelines for a business activity engaged in by a lawyer were set forth by the American Bar Association's Professional Ethics Committee in its Opinion 57, namely:

"It is not necessarily improper for an attorney to engage in a business but impropriety arises when the business is of such a nature or is conducted in such a manner as to be inconsistent with the lawyer's duties as a member of the Bar. Such an inconsistency arises when the business is one that twill readily lend itself as a means for procuring professional employment for him, is such that it can be used as a cloak for indirect solicitation on his behalf, or is of a nature that, if handled by a lawyer, would be regarded as the practice of law, To avoid such inconsistencies it is always desirable and usually necessary that the lawyer keep any business in which he is engaged entirely separate and apart from his practice of the 1aw.and he must, in any event, conduct it with due observance of the standards of conduct required of him a& a lawyer."

Opinion 57 also stated that it is vitally necessary to keeps "any business in which a lawyer may be...