69 The Alabama Lawyer 448 (2008). State Bar Actively Addressing Growing Hispanic Population.

• Author: BY ENRIQUE J. GIMENEZ and WENDY PADILLA-MADDEN

The Alabama Lawyer

2008.

69 The Alabama Lawyer 448 (2008).

State Bar Actively Addressing Growing Hispanic Population

State Bar Actively Addressing Growing Hispanic PopulationBY ENRIQUE J. GIMENEZ and WENDY PADILLA-MADDEN With a Hispanic population increase of more than 210 percent during the 1990s, Alabama has become a leading United States center for Hispanic population growth and business development. The first few years of this decade continued the trend, with Alabama's 22 percent increase in Hispanic population nearly doubling the national average. While many societal services have fallen short in their efforts to cope with this cultural influx-and, in some instances, simply failed to expend any effort at all-the Alabama State Bar, through its Spanish Speaking Lawyers Committee ("SSL"), has taken affirmative steps to ensure that this massive client base, one oftentimes unfamiliar with this country's language and, more often than that, its legal system, are adequately represented and protected.

The SSL's initial efforts quickly revealed that many in the Hispanic community were distrustful of engaging the legal process, even in the face of obvious legal wrong, based in large part on negative experiences with attorneys advertising themselves out to be Spanish-speaking. These attorneys, once engaged, all too often produced an assistant or employee with no legal training to serve as the client's contact. These relationships almost always ended poorly.

Earlier this year, however, the SSL was able to secure an informal opinion from the Office of General Counsel that quite sharply prohibits this type of legal abuse.(fn1) More specifically, the opinion makes clear that an attorney cannot imply an ability to speak a foreign language when, in fact, it is an employee of the attorney who will be communicating with the client in the foreign language. Instead, if an attorney is going to advertise the fact that her law firm can communicate with a client in a particular language, the opinion requires that any advertisement state with particularity whether the attorney has the ability to communicate in the foreign language, or whether an employee has that ability.

Perhaps most importantly, the informal opinion leaves no doubt that an attorney will be held responsible for the conduct of any non-lawyer employee to the same extent as if...