The ABA’s Standing Committee issued guidance regarding the obligation to provide information to a former client, which is summarized as follows:  Model Rule 1.16(d) requires a lawyer to respond to requests for information from former clients or the former client’s successor counsel when doing so is necessary to protect client interests and reasonably practicable.  Ordinarily, such a request will require a response when the requested information was acquired by the lawyer during the course of the representation, is unavailable from other sources, and is important to the client’s interests in the matter in which the lawyer formerly represented them.  However, the Rule does not require a lawyer to take steps to acquire new information, generate written responses, or provide further legal services to the client in response to a request for information.

More specifically:

Taken together, the Standing Committee noted, various authorities “implicitly recognize that ‘to protect a client’s interests’ it is sometimes necessary for a lawyer who terminated, or is terminating, a representation to convey information that was not recorded and maintained in the client’s file….  When a request makes it evident that unrecorded information is necessary to protect the former client’s interests in the matter, the former counsel must convey such information if it is reasonably practicable to do so. Such a necessity may arise, for example, when the requested information will assist successor counsel in completing the representation. Of course, a lawyer’s memory may fade over time. But, if the lawyer recalls the information, and the unrecorded information is needed to protect the client’s interests in the matter, the lawyer must take reasonably practicable steps to provide it, whether it is requested contemporaneously with the termination of the representation or later.

“This duty is limited, however, by the provision that complying with the request actually be necessary ‘to protect the client’s interests’ in the matter undertaken by the lawyer and that compliance be ‘reasonably practicable.’ Rule 1.16(d) does not require a lawyer to comply with the former client’s or successor counsel’s request if the requested information is not necessary to protect the client’s interests in the matter (although the lawyer certainly may comply voluntarily out of concern for the former client or as a matter of professionalism). An example of a legitimate need is when the requested information is material to the successor counsel’s representation in the matter previously conducted by the lawyer, such as when the information is important to a full understanding of the ongoing legal matter at the time the information is requested. In transactional representations, information may be needed to successfully complete negotiations or to understand the former client’s obligations or those of its counterparty under a contract. The usefulness of requested information may change over time.

“The request must also be for information already acquired in the context of work already performed for the former client. If necessary to protect the client’s interests relevant to the representation, this may include, for example: (a) factual information that could have been, and perhaps should have been, memorialized, regarding, for example, an interview with a client or material witness or what happened off the record in court or in settlement negotiations with opposing counsel; (b) the original lawyer’s strategic or tactical reasons for actions taken in the course of representing the client; (c) that lawyer’s impression of a witness’s credibility; or (d) the lawyer’s un-memorialized communications with the client. In other words, the obligation is a counterpart to the obligation to surrender file materials. It applies to material information previously acquired by the lawyer regarding work conducted in the course of the lawyer’s representation of the client.

“Lawyers do not have an obligation under Rule 1.16(d) to provide information that is readily accessible elsewhere or by other means. For example, if the lawyer has surrendered the file according to the law of the jurisdiction, and the former client is asking for information readily available from the court system’s website, the lawyer would have no obligation to provide the information.  If the lawyer provided the file and other evidently important information at the time the representation ended, that lawyer can ordinarily assume in the absence of a request that any additional unrecorded information is not necessary to protect the former client’s relevant interests. Therefore, the lawyer generally does not have an obligation to provide additional information unless requested.

“Lawyers also do not have an obligation to provide information when the request concerns a different matter from the one in which the lawyer represented the former client. For example, a lawyer who withdraws from the representation before a litigation or transaction is completed may have an obligation under Rule 1.16(d) to comply with requests for needed information even if the lawyer’s own role in the litigation or transaction was limited in scope and the lawyer completed the work in the matter for which the lawyer was retained. However, a lawyer who represented a client in a completed business transaction would not have an obligation under Rule 1.16(d) to comply with a request for information to be used in a subsequent lawsuit between the parties to the transaction, because that would be a new matter, even though it grew out of the transaction in which the lawyer provided legal services.

“Additionally, lawyers are not required to generate further work product such as producing affidavits or memos, because that would normally exceed the ‘reasonably practicable’ limitation. There also is no requirement that the lawyer make any attempt to retrieve information not already in the lawyer’s possession or otherwise known to the lawyer. If the lawyer does not recall the answer to a request, there is no obligation to perform further work, such as reviewing a court file, to refresh the lawyer’s recollection. Lawyers are also not obligated to respond to repetitive or excessively time-consuming requests, nor are they required to educate former clients or successor counsel on the law.

“Finally, once a representation is over, a lawyer obviously has no obligation to respond to a request for information by performing further legal services, such as providing legal advice to the former client, in the absence of an explicit agreement to do so. When the request is coming from an unrepresented former client, the lawyer should be careful to explain that the lawyer no longer represents the former client and is not providing further legal representation.”

 

ABA Formal Opinion No. 520  (Jan. 21, 2026)