State Bar of California Standing Committee on Professional Responsibility and Conduct Formal Opinion 2007-174
Topic: retention/communication of clients’ files.
Digest of the Committee:
“An attorney is ethically obligated, upon termination of employment, promptly to release to a client, at the client’s request: (1) an electronic version of e-mail correspondence, because such items come within a category subject to release; (2) an electronic version of the pleadings, because such items too come within a category subject to release; (3) an electronic version of discovery requests and responses, because such items are subject to release as reasonably necessary to the client’s representation; (4) an electronic deposition and exhibit database, because such an item itself contains items that come within categories subject to release; and (5) an electronic version of transactional documents, because such items are subject to release as reasonably necessary to the client’s representation. The attorney’s ethical obligation to release any electronic items, however, does not require the attorney to create such items if they do not exist or to change the application (e.g., from Word (.doc) to WordPerfect (.wpd)) if they do exist. Prior to release, the attorney is ethically obligated to take reasonable steps to strip from each of these electronic items any metadata reflecting confidential information belonging to any other client.”
Rules:
California Rules of Professional Conduct Rule 3-700(D)
Business and Professions Code section 6068, subdivision (e)(1)
The full text is available at http://ethics.calbar.ca.gov…