ISBA Development Site
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This website is for ISBA staff use only. All visitors should return to the main ISBA website.
In most circumstances, a lawyer will not be able to represent both the buyer and seller in a real estate transaction.
The Illinois Rules of Professional Conduct prohibit a lawyer from representing a husband and wife in a short sale if the husband is currently a client of the lawyer who is investigating filing a divorce petition for the husband, unless both the husband and wife give informed consent to the conflict and the lawyer “reasonably believes that the lawyer will be able to provide competent and diligent representation to each affected client.”
A lawyer may prepare a trust document for a client that at the client's request directs the trustee to engage that lawyer to provide legal services for the trust. The lawyer may do so, however, only if the client consents after the lawyer fully communicates and discloses the economic interest of the lawyer in including such provision and indicates that such provision might not be enforceable.
A lawyer who receives fees as a trust administrator from a trust company to whom he refers clients has a conflict of interest and is involved in a business transaction with a client; the lawyer must disclose his relationship with the trust company to the client, the method and source of his compensation, and obtain the client's consent after disclosure.
A lawyer retained as counsel for a savings and loan association may not contact an applicant for a home loan to be issued by the savings and loan association if it is known that the home loan purchaser is represented by counsel. Further, such communication constitutes improper solicitation of professional employment for pecuniary gain.
It may be professionally improper for a lawyer to represent both a renouncing spouse and a claimant in the same proceedings.
It is not professionally improper for a lawyer to represent the same person in a representative capacity as executor and in an individual capacity as debtor to the estate, especially where a special administrator has been appointed to collect the debt.
Multiple representation in "domino"-type transactions permitted only with full disclosure to and consent from all parties; disclosure must be continuing throughout the representation.
Multiple representation of buyer and lender in real estate transaction may be prohibited where interest of each cannot be adequately represented.
Multiple Representation of Business Broker and the Seller and Buyer of a Business in the Same Transaction is Professionally Improper.