Prospective Waiver of the Right To Disqualify Counsel for Conflicts of Interest

Part I of the Note discusses canon 4, first explaining the presumptions and policies that underlie it, then arguing that courts should enforce prospective waivers of the presumption of shared confidences when conditioned on the law firm’s effective screening of client confidences – keeping them from the attorneys within the firm who will take part in the adverse representation. Part II turns to canon 5, and argues that prospective waivers of the presumption of diluted loyalties should be enforced against clients moving to disqualify law firms for a canon 5 violation.