Annual Attorney Professional Conduct Review

Pull the attorney's status from each state bar portal where they hold a license — resident and reciprocal. Note any administrative suspensions, dues delinquencies, or pending discipline. Pro hac vice admissions for active matters should also be confirmed.

Verify the attorney is named on the firm's current LPL declarations page with appropriate limits. Confirm prior-acts coverage is intact for any lateral hire. File the declarations page in the attorney's compliance folder.

Run the attorney's name through the disciplinary records of every state bar where licensed. Note any complaints filed, dismissed, or pending during the review period. Review open grievances with the managing partner before signing off the section.

Export the official transcript from the state bar portal — not the attorney's self-reported tracker. Many states report CLE on a fiscal-year basis distinct from the calendar year; confirm you are pulling the correct compliance period.

Match course-by-course against the firm's internal tracker. Investigate any session the attorney attended but the bar has not yet recorded — sponsors sometimes take 30–60 days to report credits. Capture the total credit hours earned in the compliance period.

Ethics credits are tracked separately from general hours in every state. Several jurisdictions now require dedicated diversity, mental health, or technology-competence hours — confirm each category is satisfied, not just the aggregate total.

Enroll the attorney in accredited courses covering the deficient categories before the annual compliance deadline. Confirm sponsor accreditation in the relevant state — credits from an out-of-state provider do not always transfer. Late reporting can trigger license suspension.

Pull the conflicts-check log from Clio (or the firm's PMS) for every matter opened during the review period. Confirm each search ran across opposing parties, witnesses, and related entities — not just the named client. Flag any matter opened without a recorded search.

Pull every conflict waiver signed during the period and confirm informed consent is documented in writing. Waivers covering future conflicts must be specific enough to be enforceable — generic blanket waivers fail under most state interpretations of Rule 1.7.

For any lateral hired in the past year, confirm an ethical wall was implemented under Rule 1.10 and that the screened attorney signed an acknowledgment. Verify the prior firm's clients received required notice in jurisdictions that mandate it.

Walk the managing partner through additions to the conflicts database during the review period — new matters, new adverse parties, closed-but-retained relationships. Document any gaps in the database for follow-up before next year's review.

Confirm full-disk encryption on the attorney's firm-issued laptop and mobile devices. Verify firm email is the only channel used for client communication — personal Gmail and unencrypted SMS are recurring Rule 1.6(c) failure points.

Pull access logs from NetDocuments, iManage, or the firm's DMS for matters the attorney is not staffed on — unexplained access is a confidentiality red flag. Verify no client documents have been moved to personal Dropbox or OneDrive accounts.

Rule 5.3 extends confidentiality obligations to paralegals, legal assistants, and contract reviewers working under the attorney's supervision. Confirm signed acknowledgments are current for every team member touching the attorney's matters.

For matters destroyed during the review period under the firm's retention schedule, confirm a certificate of secure destruction is on file. Estate planning, real estate, and trust files typically carry longer retention requirements than the bar minimum — verify the schedule was applied correctly.

Three-way reconciliation matches the book balance, the bank statement, and the sum of individual client ledgers. Each month must reconcile to the penny and carry partner sign-off under Rule 1.15. Missing or unsigned reconciliations are an audit finding on their own.

Any individual client ledger going below zero is a Rule 1.15 violation and is reported to disciplinary counsel by the bank in most states. Review the period for negative balances, transfers between operating and trust, and earned-fee withdrawals exceeding the cleared retainer.

Disbursements made before the deposit cleared cause the negative balance that triggers an overdraft. Confirm the firm's 7-to-10 banking day rule was followed for paper checks and that wire/ACH funds were verified before earned-fee transfers.

Document each incident: client matter, dollar amount, root cause, corrective action, and date the trust ledger was restored. Notify the managing partner and outside counsel if self-reporting to disciplinary counsel is required under state rules.

Sample a dozen client inquiries from the past quarter and measure time-to-substantive-response. Rule 1.4 failures and slow communication are the leading source of bar grievances — far ahead of substantive malpractice. Flag any inquiry left unanswered beyond five business days.

Pull five engagement letters signed during the review period. Verify each has clear scope language, the fee structure (hourly, flat, or contingency), the retainer terms, and a fee dispute mechanism. Scope creep without a written amendment is a recurring fee-grievance pattern.

Confirm every active matter has the statute of limitations and next-action deadline recorded in both the docketing system and a second redundancy (paper file note, calendar reminder, or secondary attorney's tickler). Missed SOL is the single highest-severity malpractice exposure.

The managing partner reviews findings across all six sections and records an overall determination. Any "Pass with notes" or "Action required" outcome must include a written remediation plan and a re-review date before the next compliance cycle.