How to Outline Professional Responsibility

Use the Model Rules' numbering as your table of contents. Unlike Torts or Contracts, PR has an authoritative organizing text, and your professor, the casebook, and the MPRE all use it. Fighting that structure costs you retrieval speed on an exam where the answer is usually "Rule 1.9(a), and here's why."

The eight clusters: 1.x is the client-lawyer relationship (competence, scope, fees, confidentiality, conflicts, safekeeping property, declining and terminating); 2.x is the lawyer as counselor and evaluator; 3.x is the lawyer as advocate (meritorious claims, candor to the tribunal, fairness to opposing party, trial publicity, the prosecutor's special duties in 3.8); 4.x is transactions with non-clients (truthfulness, the no-contact rule in 4.2, unrepresented persons in 4.3, inadvertently sent documents in 4.4(b)); 5.x is law firms and associations (supervision, the independent-judgment rules, unauthorized practice, restrictions on practice); 6.x is public service and pro bono; 7.x is advertising and solicitation; 8.x is bar admission, reporting misconduct in 8.3, and the misconduct catchall in 8.4.

Under each rule, write the black-letter text in your own compressed words, then the operative Comments. The Comments carry an enormous amount of the tested content — Comment 3 to Rule 1.6 on the breadth of "information relating to the representation," the Comment defining "substantially related" for Rule 1.9, the Comments to 1.7 on non-consentable conflicts. A PR outline that omits Comments is missing half the doctrine.

PR courses blend at least four sources, and the single most common student error is treating them as one. Build a consequences column into every rule entry so you always know what the violation produces.

First, discipline under the Model Rules as adopted in a jurisdiction — the only consequence the rules themselves supply (see the Scope note that violating a rule does not itself create a cause of action). Second, civil liability: legal malpractice (duty, breach, causation, damages, usually requiring a case-within-a-case) and breach of fiduciary duty, informed by the Restatement (Third) of the Law Governing Lawyers. Togstad v. Vesely, Otto, Miller & Keefe, 291 N.W.2d 686 (Minn. 1980), is the standard vehicle for showing that an attorney-client relationship — and thus a duty — can form without a fee or a signed agreement. Third, procedural remedies: disqualification motions, fee forfeiture, sanctions under Rule 11 or § 1927. Fourth, constitutional and evidentiary overlays: Sixth Amendment ineffective assistance under Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984), conflict-based IAC under Cuyler v. Sullivan, 446 U.S. 335 (1980), and Holloway v. Arkansas, 435 U.S. 475 (1978); the court's authority to reject waiver of conflict-free counsel under Wheat v. United States, 486 U.S. 153 (1988); and First Amendment limits on lawyer speech from Bates v. State Bar of Arizona, 433 U.S. 350 (1977), Ohralik v. Ohio State Bar Ass'n, 436 U.S. 447 (1978), In re Primus, 436 U.S. 412 (1978), Florida Bar v. Went For It, Inc., 515 U.S. 618 (1995), and Gentile v. State Bar of Nevada, 501 U.S. 1030 (1991).

Give this a standalone chart, because three doctrines with different scopes, holders, and exceptions govern the same facts. Rule 1.6 covers all information relating to the representation, regardless of source, and binds the lawyer in every setting. The attorney-client privilege is narrower — confidential communications between lawyer and client for the purpose of legal advice — but it is an evidentiary shield enforceable against compelled testimony. Work product under Hickman v. Taylor, 329 U.S. 495 (1947), and Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(b)(3) protects materials prepared in anticipation of litigation, with near-absolute protection for opinion work product.

Chart the corporate wrinkle: Upjohn Co. v. United States, 449 U.S. 383 (1981), rejected the control-group test for federal privilege, while Rule 1.13 tells you who the client is and what to do when a constituent's conduct threatens the organization (report up, and under 1.13(c), sometimes report out).

Then memorize the Rule 1.6(b) exceptions as a numbered list — you will lose points for reciting them loosely. They are permissive ("may reveal"), and the two financial-harm exceptions in 1.6(b)(2)–(3) require the client to have used the lawyer's services. Note separately that the crime-fraud exception to privilege is not the same as 1.6(b), and that Rule 3.3(c) makes the candor obligations override confidentiality — the point Nix v. Whiteside, 475 U.S. 157 (1986), makes constitutionally safe.

Conflicts is where most PR essays live, so build it as a flowchart rather than a rule-by-rule list. Step one: who is the client — current, former, prospective (Rule 1.18), or an organization (Rule 1.13)? Step two: which rule applies? Rule 1.7 for concurrent conflicts, split into direct adversity and material limitation. Rule 1.9 for former clients, keyed to whether the matters are the same or substantially related and whether interests are materially adverse. Rule 1.8 for the enumerated specific conflicts. Rules 1.11 and 1.12 for lawyers moving out of government or judicial service.

Step three: is it consentable? Under 1.7(b), never if the representation is prohibited by law or involves asserting a claim by one client against another in the same litigation, and never if the lawyer cannot reasonably believe she can provide competent and diligent representation to each. Step four: what does consent require? Track the exact formality — "informed consent, confirmed in writing" under 1.7(b)(4) and 1.9, versus a "writing signed by the client" under 1.8(a) and 1.8(g). Step five: imputation under 1.10, and whether screening is available (1.10(a)(2) for lateral hires, 1.11(b), 1.12(c), 1.18(d)).

Keep a short list of the 1.8 rules that are flatly prohibited rather than waivable: 1.8(d) media rights during representation, 1.8(e)'s limits on financial assistance, 1.8(j)'s sexual relationship rule, and the acquisition of a proprietary interest under 1.8(i) outside the lien and contingency exceptions.

If your syllabus includes judges — and most do, because roughly 10% of MPRE questions cover them — give the Model Code of Judicial Conduct its own section rather than burying it. Organize by the four Canons, then break out Rule 2.11 (disqualification), Rule 2.9 (ex parte communications), Rule 3.7–3.15 (extrajudicial activities, gifts, compensation reporting), and the campaign rules in Canon 4.

Add the constitutional layer: Republican Party of Minnesota v. White, 536 U.S. 765 (2002), on announce clauses; Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Co., 556 U.S. 868 (2009), on due process recusal after extraordinary campaign spending; and Williams v. Pennsylvania, 579 U.S. 1 (2016), on a judge who had been a prosecutor in the same case. For federal judges, note 28 U.S.C. § 455.

This genuinely varies, and you have to ask. Three things drive it: whether your professor tests the ABA Model Rules straight (most common, and the MPRE tests the Model Rules and the CJC), whether your state's rules deviate materially, and whether the course is graded by essay, multiple choice, or a drafting simulation.

California is the biggest outlier — it has its own Rules of Professional Conduct, renumbered in 2018 to roughly parallel the ABA scheme but with real substantive differences, plus confidentiality duties in Business & Professions Code § 6068(e). New York, Texas, and several other states also depart in specific places, and a handful of jurisdictions never adopted the 1.6(b) exceptions in full. If your professor teaches a state variant, put the variation in a right-hand column next to the Model Rule rather than replacing the Model Rule — you will need the Model Rule for the MPRE anyway.

For citations in a paper or brief, the Model Rules are cited as a model code, not a statute: Model Rules of Pro. Conduct r. 1.6 (Am. Bar Ass'n 2023), with the year of the version you used. Older Bluebook editions used "Prof'l"; check the current Table 6 before you submit. Comments are cited as r. 1.6 cmt. 3.

Compress to a two-page attack sheet. On page one, put the conflicts flowchart and the confidentiality triad. On page two, put a trigger list: which fact patterns signal which rule. Client wants to lie on the stand → 3.3(a)(3) and (b), plus Nix. Lawyer learns opposing counsel emailed a privileged document by mistake → 4.4(b). Client threatens serious bodily harm → 1.6(b)(1). Fee split with a lawyer at another firm → 1.5(e). Contacting a represented employee of a corporate defendant → 4.2 and its Comments. Non-lawyer investor or fee-sharing → 5.4.

Encode modal verbs precisely. "Shall," "may," "shall not," and "reasonably believes" are not interchangeable, and MPRE-style questions turn on the difference between "subject to discipline" and "subject to civil liability." Write the verb in your outline exactly as the rule does, and mark permissive exceptions in a different color from mandatory ones.

Finally, add a running list of the definitional terms in Rule 1.0: "informed consent," "confirmed in writing," "screened," "firm," "knowingly," "reasonable belief," "tribunal," "writing." Those definitions resolve more exam questions than any single substantive rule.