The Oregon State Bar offers the assistance of its General Counsel’s Office to discuss your legal ethics questions. One of the lawyers in General Counsel’s Office can help you identify applicable disciplinary rules, point out relevant formal ethics opinions and other resource material, and give you a reaction to your ethics question. No attorney-client relationship is established between callers and the lawyers employed by the Oregon State Bar and the information submitted and responses provided are public records. Lawyers seeking legal ethics advice subject to the lawyer-client privilege should consult a lawyer of their choice in private practice. To protect the confidentiality of client information, questions posed to General Counsel's Office are requested to be in the form of a hypothetical.
A written advisory opinion from the OSB General Counsel, Legal Ethics Committee or Board of Governors may be considered by the Supreme Court as evidence of the lawyer's good faith effort to comply with the disciplinary rules and as a basis for mitigating any sanction imposed if a violation is found. Bar members who wish to request a written advisory ethics opinion from OSB General Counsel should review this article.