Clara and Carl are a married couple who have three children ages Cassie (age 4), Chad (age 8), and Cooper (age 19). Clara and Carl decide it is time to do their estate plan and have a will and trust drawn up to protect their children in the future. Carl went to one year of law school before switching to business school 22 years ago. During that one year time he met Lin who finished law school and is now practicing litigation with a firm that only does patent law. Carl and Clara are both now good friends with Lin and want Lin to do their estate plan. Lin has never done an estate plan, but he adores Carl, Clara and the entire family and knows he could do it.

Lin's firm is not keen on the idea of him doing it, as he calls it, 'an informal and simple estate plan.' But, they allow him to do it as long as he follows the firm protocols of signing on any new client. Lin calls Carl and Clara in to sign a typical engagement letter. Because of the nature of the firm's work most of the engagement letters are form letters where the attorney just needs to fill in information such as fee, any limitations on scope of work, or special request of lawyers working on a case. When Carl and Clara come in they sit in Lin's office as he fills in the blanks of the engagement letter on his screen while letting Carl and Clara know what he is doing. In this situation, he fills in that he is charging his partner rate of $650 an hour for the work, and then fills in his name under the signatory line for the lawyer and Carl and Clara's names for the signatures for the client. Everything else is left as is on the form. He prints it out and all three sign.

Lin immediately starts to do some research on how to do estate planning and realizes quickly it may be harder than he thought! He goes down to his local bookstore and buys 'Estate Planning for Dummies' to help him. But, before he can really get into it, he gets pulled into a big patent trial and is out of commission for the next 3 months in another state. Not wanting to disappoint his friends, he decides to have his first year associate, Emma, read the book and gather some notes for him. It's a relatively simple estate plan with one house, one retirement account for the each of them, and life insurance where the kids are all equal beneficiaries. They have decided that Carl's sister Meg will be guardian if anything should happen to Carl and Clara. Emma works on the estate plan and takes notes. She asks other lawyers in the office for help, but because no one does estate planning she's pretty much on her own. Lucky for her, her mom is an estate planning lawyer, so she calls her mom for help! Her mom answers Meg's questions, and drafts a basic will and trust and sends it to Meg.

Three months later, Carl is done with trial and is just getting back to the office and into his desk and cases. His phone rings and Clara is on the line. She needs to see him immediately and is coming over. She doesn't say why, but he could tell she was upset and frantic. He hangs up the phone confused, then suddenly remembers that he had promised to do their estate planning! He calls Emma into his office who produces the will and trust. Still trying to get settled from trial and bewildered from Clara's phone call he takes the will and trust and rushes Emma out of his office while she is trying to explain how her mom helped her on the estate planning. He does not hear a thing and slams the door behind her! He quickly looks over the document and within minutes Clara barges in. She has been crying and is clearly still not okay.

Lin asks Clara to sit down and gives her some water. Clara explains that she does not want Meg to be the children's legal guardian's because Meg's new husband is actually Chad's father. Clara had a brief affair and Carl has no idea. Clara got pregnant and she just told Carl that Chad was his son. Lin listens to Clara and calms her down. She makes him swear not to tell Carl. Lin sends Clara home so he can think and promises to call her tomorrow.

The next day both Carl and Clara suddenly appear unannounced in Lin's office. Lin has not had the opportunity to call Clara, but he knows he needs to talk to her. Chad is not Carl's son, and he has no obligation to leave any assets to Chad. Lin is on the phone when they arrive, so he gets an email from the reception saying, "Carl and Clara are here to talk about the estate plan and to pay your bill." Hanging up the phone, Lin realizes that in over three months a bill has never been sent to Carl and Clara. He has a will and trust to review with them, so he quickly pulls up the billing records for the file. He sees that Emma has billed for 'research' and 'drafting' of a will and trust of 1,430 hours at a rate of $220 an hour. He quickly changes all of Emma's time to his time and print a copy of the bill to give to Carl and Clara along with the will and trust that Emma gave him.

Carl and Clara come into Lin's office. Lin looks to Clara for some sign that she has told Carl the news of Chad and that she does not want Meg to be the kids' guardian, but it is clear from her body language that she has not told her husband anything. Lin decides to go along with it and hands them the will and trust to review along with his bill for payment and says, 'it looks good, and everything is in there.' They pay the invoice on the spot, take the will and trust home for review, and will come back in a few days to further discuss with Lin.

What ethical violations, if any, has Lin committed. Answer according to ABA authorities.

What ethical violations, if any, has Emma committed. Answer according to ABA authorities.