(a) General Counsel's office will determine whether a question submitted appears to present or involve a question of ethics or professional conduct and whether the inquirer has provided facts sufficient to permit the formulation of an opinion. General Counsel's office may ask the inquirer to submit necessary additional facts or may advise the inquirer that no question of ethics or professional conduct is presented or involved.(b) General Counsel's office will endeavor to assist bar members in analyzing the ethics of the inquirer's prospective conduct and may provide reactions to the questions presented. General Counsel will not offer an ethics opinion on past conduct by other members, except to assist a member to determine whether conduct described implicates the inquiring member's duty to report another lawyer's misconduct under Oregon RPC 8.3. Ethics questions and responses are not confidential and communications with General Counsel's office are not privileged. No attorney-client relationship is intended or created by such communications with the Bar. Members should submit ethics questions in a hypothetical form that does not disclose client confidences, or obtain their client's informed consent prior to disclosure. Materials submitted to General Counsel in connection with ethics inquiries are public records, and may be disclosed by General Counsel to the public, the Client Assistance Office or Disciplinary Counsel's Office.(c) For Oregon RPC 8.6 to apply to a request for ethics assistance, a member must put his or her ethics question in writing. General Counsel's office will respond in writing as time allows. The Bar will retain all written ethics assistance requests and General Counsel's office responses for at least five years and those requests are public records. General Counsel's office has the discretion to decline to provide a written response, if it determines that the question should be considered by the Legal Ethics Committee due to the difficulty, complexity or novelty that the question raises or the difficulty or complexity of an appropriate response. Members must provide General Counsel's office and the Legal Ethics Committee with accurate, and as complete as possible, explanations of the facts underlying their ethics questions.(d) If inquiries submitted to the Legal Ethics Committee contain facts that are inadequate to permit the formulation of an opinion or a direct answer, General Counsel's office may ask for submission of necessary additional facts. The chair of the Committee will assign those requests and questions submitted directly to the Committee to one or more committee members to prepare a response. On receipt of those additional facts, General Counsel's office will promptly submit them to the assigned member of the Committee. The Committee may, in its discretion, write opinions on subjects that the Committee believes would be helpful to the membership, whether or not the Committee receives a specific inquiry on the subject. Such opinions will be handled in the same fashion as opinions based on specific questions.(e) The Legal Ethics Committee will establish and will periodically review guidelines for determining the appropriate form of response to member's ethics questions. Members may use formal opinions and letters of direct advice issued by the Committee in the same manner and to the same effect under Oregon RPC 8.6 as written responses from General Counsel's office. When the Committee approves an opinion and recommends formal publication, General Counsel's office will place a copy of the opinion on the Board's next meeting agenda. All dissents, comments of substance or minority opinions will also be placed on the Board's agenda. The Board will review the proposed opinion and either approve it for formal publication, refer it back to the Committee for further study or revision or direct that no opinion be issued in the matter. The Board may also distribute the opinion to the membership for comment before making a final decision. All opinions that the Board designates to be issued as formal opinions will be published in Oregon Formal Ethics Opinions (OSB 2005) and on the Bar's website.Adopted effective 4/14/2023.