AZ Supreme Court Requires Succession Plan

AZ Supreme Court Requires Succession Plan

With the start of the new year, the team at D. French Advisors would like to alert you to some changes that will impact the way you anticipate the future of your practice. In December, the Arizona Supreme Court passed several rule amendments requiring lawyers to implement succession plans for client files. The changes, which were effective January 1, 2016, emphasize that implementing these succession plans is an essential part of fulfilling client duties. The Court’s amendments to the rule can be found here: Order Amending Rules 41 and 66-69.
Simply stated, these rule changes now require a lawyer to appoint successor counsel to ensure clients will promptly receive their files and trust account moneys in the event the lawyer is unable to continue as the client’s counsel. This change came about after a task force was assembled by the State Bar, which is often appointed as conservator of client files when a lawyer has died, disappeared, become disabled, or been disbarred, and has failed to designate successor counsel for file handling. When no succession plan is in place, it falls to the State Bar to inventory the files and contact each of the lawyer’s clients in an attempt to return each file in the lawyer’s inventory. It is a time-intensive process, and the State Bar is often unable to get in touch with a client, so it must store these files for indefinite periods of time, which harms the client and costs money.  The rule changes thus seek to encourage lawyers to plan ahead and prevent this scenario from occurring.

To ensure you do not run afoul of this new rule as a barred lawyer in Arizona, you should review certain succession planning steps as provided in the Succession Planning Handbook prepared by the AZ State Bar, and complete relevant accompanying forms, all of which can be found here: Succession Planning.