Services of Professional Adjustor Intermediaries Aiding Unlawful Practice
Annotate this Case 87 N.J.L.J. 700
October 29, 1964
Appointed by the New Jersey Supreme Court
OPINION 56
Services of Professional Adjustor
Intermediaries Aiding Unlawful Practice
This inquiry poses the questions:
Is it proper for an attorney who represents a plaintiff in an automobile accident case to hire an independent, non-attorney, adjustor to negotiate and come to a settlement of the plaintiff's case with the defendant's insurance carrier?
If the answer to the foregoing inquiry is in the affirmative, is it proper for the attorney to pay the lay adjustor a fixed percentage of the settlement as his fee?
The last paragraph of Canons of Professional Ethics, Canon 33
provides:
Partnerships between lawyers and members of other professions or non-professional persons should not be formed or permitted where any part of the partnership employment consists of the practice of law.
Canon 34 prohibits division of legal fees with a layman; Canon
35 directs the attorney to avoid performing professional legal
services through lay intermediaries; and Canon 47 provides:
No lawyer shall permit his professional services, or his name, to be used in aid of, or to make possible, the unauthorized practice of law by any lay agency, personal or corporate.
The engagement of a layman to settle a claim offends Canons 33 and 35; and, to the extent it enables the adjustor to perform legal
services, it constitutes aiding the unlawful practice contrary to Canon 47.
rent on a percentage of the attorney's income, 87 N.J.L.J. 641 (1964). The practice posed in this inquiry would put an attorney in the position of appearing to solicit via the adjustor. See Ass'n.
of the Bar, City of N.Y., Committee on Professional Ethics Opinion 286 (1931).
For the foregoing reasons each of the proposed practices is disapproved.
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