Professional Responsibility Compliance Review

Pull every matter opened this quarter from Clio, NetDocuments, or whichever conflicts source the firm runs against, and confirm a documented search across client, opposing party, related entities, and key witnesses for each one. Matters opened without a recorded search are the most common Rule 1.7 audit finding.

For any associate or of-counsel hire this quarter, confirm a Rule 1.10 imputation review was completed and that ethical-wall acknowledgments are signed. Lateral-hire conflicts that surface six months in are how firms get DQ'd from active matters.

Confirm MFA on the DMS and email, full-disk encryption on attorney laptops, and that any departed staff have been deprovisioned. Spot-check three matters with sensitive data (immigration, family, criminal) for portal-only sharing.

Reconcile book balance, bank statement balance, and the sum of individual client ledgers — all three must match to the penny. Attach the reconciliation report from Clio Trust, CosmoLex, or Tabs3 Trust.

Any single client ledger below zero is a Rule 1.15 violation regardless of the aggregate IOLTA balance. Banks notify state disciplinary counsel of IOLTA overdrafts in most states — catch it here before the bank does.

For each negative ledger, record the client, amount, root cause (uncleared retainer, premature disbursement, posting error), and the corrective transfer from the operating account. Loop in outside ethics counsel if the overdraft was already reported by the bank.

Pull the disbursement register and confirm no checks were cut against funds less than 10 banking days old (or the firm's documented hold period). Disbursing on uncleared retainer is the most common path to an IOLTA negative balance.

Download the current compliance period totals for every attorney, broken out by general, ethics, and (where required) diversity or mental-health hours. Don't rely on the firm's internal log — only the state bar's record matters for license suspension.

Ethics hours are tracked separately and are the most-missed category. Apply your jurisdiction's annual minimum (typically 1–3 ethics hours within the 12–15 hour total) and flag anyone under pace 60+ days from the deadline.

Block calendar time and register flagged attorneys for accredited courses (state bar, Lawline, Practising Law Institute). Confirm enrollment in writing — verbal commitments don't show up in the bar's portal.

Confirm responsible attorneys reviewed paralegal and legal assistant work product on each active matter. Spot-check that no non-lawyer signed correspondence giving legal advice or appeared without supervision.

Sample 10% of new matters and verify each engagement letter defines scope, fee structure, retainer terms, and a fee-dispute mechanism. Vague scope is the #1 source of bar grievances on fee disputes.

Pre-bills must be edited by the responsible attorney before they go to the client — not the billing clerk. Spot-check three invoices from this quarter for verbose junior time entries that should have been condensed or written down.

Every active litigation matter should have its statute of limitations entered in two systems (docket + Outlook calendar, or CalendarRules + paper file). A missed SOL is automatic malpractice — the redundancy is the only defense.

Walk every page of the firm site, attorney bios, and active LinkedIn / Facebook / TikTok posts. Look for unverified specialization claims, missing 'Attorney Advertising' labels, and result-touting without the required no-guarantee disclaimer.

If the firm does PI intake, confirm no direct solicitation went out within 30 days of an accident date. Pull the lead log from Lawmatics or Lead Docket and cross-check incident dates against first-contact dates.

Most states require ad copy retention for 2–4 years. Save dated PDFs or screenshots of every paid ad, mailer, and sponsored post run this quarter into the marketing-archive folder, with the disclaimer language visible.