Portability in Pittsburgh is an ethics opinion before it is a compensation model. Joint Formal Opinion 2007-300, issued in June 2007 by the Pennsylvania Bar Association Committee on Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility and the Philadelphia Bar Association Professional Guidance Committee, states that the client chooses the lawyer. The client may stay with the old firm, go with the departing lawyer, or hire another lawyer. To make that choice, the client has to be told that the lawyer is leaving. Both the departing lawyer and the firm have independent duties to give that notice. The clients entitled to notice are those for whom the departing lawyer is currently handling active matters, or plays a principal role in the current delivery of legal services. The opinion urges a written joint notice. If the two sides cannot send one letter, each still has the duty. A guarantee written to a client list the letter has not yet put in front of those clients is a guarantee written to a pitch.
Notice to the firm is a separate sentence, and it is still not a number of weeks. The opinion says a lawyer may owe the firm notice of a possible departure, and that an affirmative intention to leave creates an obligation to tell the firm. Where a partnership agreement sets that notice, the opinion says compliance with the agreement should suffice, absent facts that would require earlier or later disclosure. Where no agreement sets it, the opinion says the notice should be fair and reasonable in the circumstances. Joint Opinion 2007-300 does not convert either sentence into 30, 60, or 90 days. A hiring committee that inserts a market week-count into a start-date memo is writing a number the committees did not publish. Rule 1.16(d) still requires, when a representation ends, reasonable notice to the client and time for the client to employ other counsel. That is a protection for the client. It is not a garden-leave statute.
Solicitation is the step that turns a lawful letter into a fiduciary problem. The opinion draws the line at communication that goes beyond telling the client the lawyer is leaving and starts an active effort to take the client for the new firm. It declines to tell lawyers that soliciting firm clients is permissible while they are still associated with the firm. After departure, the opinion says both sides may solicit under Rules 7.1 through 7.3, and that Rule 7.3(a) bars in-person solicitation, including by telephone or real-time electronic contact, unless the lawyer has a family, close personal, or prior professional relationship with the person, or the person contacted is a lawyer. Written communications are treated differently from that in-person bar. A lateral plan that has the new firm calling live files before the joint letter, and before the client's own instruction, is the problem the opinion is written to stop.
The covenant is a second document, and it is Rule 5.6, not a commercial non-compete. Rule 5.6 says a lawyer shall not participate in offering or making a partnership, shareholders, operating, employment, or other similar agreement that restricts the right of a lawyer to practice after termination of the relationship, except an agreement concerning benefits upon retirement, or an agreement for the sale of a law practice consistent with Rule 1.17. The comment says an agreement restricting practice after a lawyer leaves a firm limits professional autonomy and limits the freedom of clients to choose a lawyer. A Pittsburgh offer that imports a geographic non-compete from a commercial form, and then calls it a partnership covenant, is asking the candidate to sign a clause the rule tells lawyers not to make. The retirement-benefit exception and the Rule 1.17 sale exception are narrow. They are not a general non-solicit of every client the partner has touched.
Socko v. Mid-Atlantic Systems of CPA, Inc., decided by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in 2015, is the case hiring committees reach for next, and it is the wrong case for an equity deed. Socko holds that when a restrictive covenant is presented after employment has begun, continued at-will employment is not adequate consideration. A raise, a bonus, a promotion, or another new benefit has to be in the paper. That holding governs an employee. An income partner or a counsel on an employment contract can fall inside it. An equity partner's covenant sits in a partnership agreement, which Rule 5.6 already addresses. Using Socko to declare every partner covenant void, or using Rule 5.6 to ignore an employment covenant that had no new consideration, swaps the two instruments. The 41 percent counter-offer incidence on the Philadelphia line is usually the incumbent firm matching economics. It is not a reason to leave a forbidden non-compete in the new offer.
The Philadelphia interview cohort attached to this line is one count of 250 structured interviews. Mapping coverage on that same city is a separate sentence: roughly 7,500 lawyers mapped in Philadelphia. The two figures are not a Pittsburgh census, and they are not added together. They are also not added to Allegheny County's 8,688 active attorneys. Firm-wide, the map is 1,480,000+ lawyers, and the partner record is 2,600+ partner conversations since 2017. Neither of those is a Western Pennsylvania slice.
