In February, the Texas Professional Ethics Committee issued Opinion 709 addressing the ethical responsibilities of a lawyer who seeks to retain an unaffiliated lawyer to perform a discrete, temporary legal service on behalf of a client, as well as the ethical responsibilities of the unaffiliated lawyer who performs the discrete, temporary legal service.  The opinion’s focus is on those issues that arise when unaffiliated lawyers (commonly referred to as “appearance lawyers”) are retained to appear at court hearings or depositions in lieu of lawyers of record.

The facts giving rise to the opinion involve a lawyer who hires an appearance lawyer to attend a hearing for the hiring lawyer because the hiring lawyer is unable to attend. The hiring lawyer only needs the appearance lawyer to attend the hearing, which the hiring lawyer believes will be a mere formality, and not for any other purpose. The appearance lawyer is…