Here’s the situation. A big-time divorce lawyer handling a big-money divorce case is in bed with an attractive woman who is not his wife. She is, in fact, his client, the one involved in the big-money divorce case. It doesn’t take a legal scholar to see that this is a situation fraught with ethical difficulties. Right?
Here’s another situation. A tall, trim, handsome, expensively dressed divorce lawyer, the same guy as before, is in his La Salle Street suite, 34 floors up in a corner office with double exposure, an office big enough to accommodate a board meeting.
Why is there no rule? Is it because lawyer-client sex is a private matter, like other sex between consenting adults, that should not be regulated?
Is there no rule against lawyer-client sex because it is so rare that there simply has been no need to confront the problem?
Two women who have attacked the practice are the one in the bedroom and the one in the office. They say they didn’t like the way their big-shot Chicago divorce lawyer handled their cases, and especially didn’t like his sexual deportment.
The ex-flight attendant’s suit has been terminated, with Rinella prevailing on a threshold issue. The courts have held that, regardless of whether her allegations are true or false, there is no legal cause of action over a lawyer having sex with a client–unless the lawyer actually makes his representation contingent upon the sex. She made no such allegation.
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Jeanne Metzger had been married for six years. She had two young sons by her present husband and one, 13 years old, by a previous marriage. Between marriages she had worked for airlines, but when she remarried she quit to devote all her time to raising the children. Things had not been going well between the Metzgers for a couple of years. Her husband hadn’t been around home much in the evenings–working late, he assured her, but she feared the marriage was coming apart.
