Are the recordkeeping requirements set forth in the Rules of Professional Conduct and the Rules of Disciplinary Enforcement being enforced?
As has been said in many articles and lectured in many ethics CLE courses, the requirements to maintain escrow records were changed several years ago. Unfortunately, many lawyers aren’t following these rule changes. At the time, many people disputed the then-proposed rule changes believing that recordkeeping itself shouldn’t be the basis to discipline a lawyer. But, those arguments were lost. One of the biggest problems has been in the past that the Office of Disciplinary Counsel had difficulty prosecuting lawyers timely when there were issues of misuse of funds because the lawyers didn’t have any records. This resulted in long delays when the records were obtained from the banks. As a result, the present rules were passed to Rule of Disciplinary Enforcement 221 and Pennsylvania Rule of Professional Conduct 1.15.
