In my book “Minority Viewpoint – my experience, as a person of color, with the American Justice System” I describe our interactions with the Minnesota Lawyers Professional Responsibility Board (LPRB). We sent them a complaint based on the following comments from the “MN Rules of Professional Conduct” document that we found in the MN LPRB website:
- Lawyers must provide a client with an informed understanding of the client’s legal rights and obligations and explain their practical implications.
- The lawyer must make reasonable efforts to ensure that the client or other person possesses information reasonably adequate to make an informed decision. Ordinarily, this will require communication that includes a disclosure of the facts and circumstances giving rise to the situation, any explanation reasonably necessary to inform the client or other person of the material advantages and disadvantages of the proposed course of conduct and a discussion of the client’s or other person’s options and alternatives.
- A lawyer need not inform a client or other person of facts or implications already known to the client or other person; nevertheless, a lawyer who does not personally inform the client or other person assumes the risk that the client or other person is inadequately informed and the consent is invalid.
- In determining whether the information and explanation provided are reasonably adequate, relevant factors include whether the client or other person is experienced in legal matters generally and in making decisions of the type involved.
- A lawyer shall explain a matter to the extent reasonably necessary to permit the client to make informed decisions regarding the representation.
- The client should have sufficient information to participate intelligently in decisions concerning the objectives of the representation and the means by which they are to be pursued.
I sincerely felt that based on these guidelines, I had a valid complaint for the LPRB.