10. Referral Fees
(1951)

This will acknowledge receipt of your letter requesting the opinion of this Committee as to the professional propriety of a referral fee being paid by a patent attorney to a general practicing lawyer.

Your letter quotes a portion of a paragraph from Opinion 97 of the Committee on Professional Ethics of the American Bar Association, dated May 3, 1933. The entire paragraph is as follows:

"Canon 34 entitled 'Division of Fees' among other things, provides that "No division of fees for legal services is proper, except with another lawyer, based upon a division of services or responsibility. The facts, as we interpret them, do not violate this principle because the lawyer in question 'directs the services to these particular clients,' even though the services are rendered 'mostly by correspondence,' and even though the fees are divided upon a percentage basis. It hardly seems necessary to state that it is improper for an attorney to receive compensation for merely recommending another attorney to his client. Such a practice, if permitted, would tend to germinate the evils of commercialism and likewise tend to destroy the proper appreciation of professional responsibility."

The committee is of the opinion that an attorney and counselor at law can never be paid or accept a referral fee. Only where a lawyer assumes some of the responsibility or performs some of the services connected with the employment can he be paid or accept a fee.

[See RPC 1.5(e)(2)]