2025 Plenary 7 | Ethics landmines: Avoiding explosions in fiduciary representation (includes 1.2 ethics hours)

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Fiduciary clients come with built-in conflicts, divided loyalties, and plenty of gray areas. This session maps out the ethics landmines lawyers step on most often—and how to defuse them.  This interactive presentation will use factual hypotheticals to address the common ethical issues faced by attorneys, when advising clients who are acting as fiduciaries.

Learning objectives:

• Define fiduciary roles & responsibilities:
  • Clarify what it means for a client to serve as a fiduciary (trustee, executor, guardian, corporate officer, etc.) and the corresponding legal duties.
• Identify the lawyer’s dual obligations:
  • Explore the tension between advising the fiduciary as a client while ensuring the fiduciary fulfills obligations to beneficiaries or stakeholders.
• Navigate conflicts of interest:
  • Discuss common conflict scenarios (e.g., fiduciary’s personal interests vs. fiduciary duties) and strategies for lawyers to recognize and manage them ethically.
• Address confidentiality & communication challenges:
  • Examine how attorney-client privilege applies when the client is acting as a fiduciary, and how to handle requests for information from beneficiaries or co-fiduciaries.
• Apply best practices & risk management:
  • Provide practical tools for drafting engagement letters, documenting advice, and avoiding malpractice or disciplinary pitfalls when representing fiduciaries.

Speaker: Prof. Roberta 'Bobbi' Flowers, Stetson College of Law, St. Petersburg, FL

Opinions and positions stated by presenters of MoBarCLE programs are those of the presenters and not necessarily those of The Missouri Bar. This program is intended as information for lawyers in Missouri, in conjunction with other research they deem necessary, in the exercise of their independent judgment.