미국법상 변호사의 보수규제
Regulations on Attorneys' Fee in U.S.
손창완
초록
Attorneys have duty to perform legal practice on legal matters by client's delegation, and clients are provided with legal service by attorneys. In Roman times, Attorney's practice was done gratis, thus legal service could not be compensated in principle, but in modern days attorney's legal service is usually given fee. As the relationship between client and attorney is defined by delegation contract, attorneys' fee will be determined by their agreement at the time of conclusion of the contract. Nevertheless, traditionally attorneys' fee has been the most critical cause of legal disputes between clients and attorneys. Especially in cases where attorneys drew excessive fee agreements exploiting clients' unfavorable conditions, such unscrupulous fee agreements gave rise to the serious criticism in the society and also damaged the reputation and credibility of the entire legal profession. American Bar Association(ABA) provided rules on types, amounts, means of agreement of attorneys' fee and the likes in Model Rules of Professional Conduct(MPRC). As ABA is a private voluntary association, MRPC is only a model without binding force. However most of the states' bar associations in U.S. adopted ABA's MRPC as their rules of professional conduct either with or without a few modifications. Furthermore many state courts also adopted their own state bar association's rules of professional conduct which accepted ABA's MRPC as the state law by the court's authority. Therefore ABA's MRPC would be the most general rules on regulation of attorneys' fee in U.S. In this light, this paper will examine and analyze the academic discussions on interpretation, and the various cases in U.S. states courts surrounding ABA's MRPC. For this purpose, regulations on unreasonable fee, contingent fee, and fee sharing among attorneys, and procedural requirements for fee agreement in ABA's MRPC will be covered, and finally its implications for Korea will be reviewed in conclusion.