At its February 2026 midyear meeting in San Antonio, the ABA House of Delegates adopted significant revisions to Model Rule of Professional Conduct 1.14, the rule governing representation of clients who—by reason of cognitive disability, mental health condition, substance use disorder, age, or some other reason—have difficulty making adequately considered decisions. The revisions, developed in collaboration with the ABA Commission on Law and Aging, are the first substantive changes to the rule since 2002.
Louisiana’s Rule 1.14 has been, since its adoption in 2004, essentially identical to the pre-amendment ABA model (aside from the substitution of Louisiana-specific terms like “curator” and “tutor” for “guardian” and “conservator”). Now that the ABA has overhauled the model rule, Louisiana’s rule and the model rule are no longer in sync. Whether Louisiana will follow suit remains to be seen.
What Changed
The revisions make several meaningful changes to both the black-letter rule and its comments.
New terminology. The most visible change is terminological. The amended rule retires the phrase “client with diminished capacity” in favor of “client with decision-making limitations,” and replaces “normal client-lawyer relationship” with “ordinary client-lawyer relationship.” On the second point, the change is straightforward and sensible—”ordinary” was already used in the existing comments, so replacing “normal” aligns the black letter with the comments’ own language and avoids any inadvertent clinical connotation.
The shift from “diminished capacity” to “decision-making limitations” reflects a more substantive concern. “Diminished” implies a permanent, categorical deficit—a characterization that does not fit clients whose ability to make decisions may vary by context, fluctuate over time, or be aided by appropriate supports. The new term better captures the situational and variable nature of many clients’ challenges. That said, Louisiana lawyers should be aware that “decision-making limitations” is a broader and less familiar phrase that may not map cleanly onto existing Louisiana law, particularly the interdiction statutes, which use Louisiana-specific terminology. Changing the operative term in the ethics rule without corresponding changes in how courts and interdiction proceedings frame capacity could generate interpretive friction for Louisiana practitioners—at least in the short term.
A definition. The old Model Rule never defined “diminished capacity,” leaving lawyers to rely on their own judgment (and, as critics noted, potentially their own biases or assumptions about disability). The amended rule supplies a definition in the black letter: a person has decision-making limitations “if the person has substantial difficulty receiving and understanding information, evaluating information, or making or communicating decisions even with appropriate supports or accommodations.” This last clause builds into the threshold test a requirement that the lawyer consider whether accommodations could enable the client to function before concluding that the rule’s protective-action provisions are triggered at all.
Clarified guidance on clients with surrogate decision-makers. The old comments created a genuine tension. Comment 2 told lawyers to “accord the represented person the status of client,” while Comment 4 told them to “ordinarily look to the representative for decisions.” Lawyers representing clients who had a court-appointed guardian, or who were helping clients challenge their own guardianship, found this hard to square. The new comments resolve the confusion by making clear that a client with a surrogate decision-maker retains the right to seek independent counsel, and that when the client does so—for example, to challenge an interdiction—the lawyer must take direction from the client and advocate for the client’s objectives.
The new rule also makes clear that a lawyer may not advocate for the appointment of a guardian or conservator if the client opposes it. This is a real improvement: lawyers have sometimes used the protective-action provision in ways that worked against their own client’s stated wishes. The preference for less restrictive arrangements and client autonomy is well-supported in clinical and legal literature.
That said, the new comments’ emphasis on deferring to the client’s stated opposition to protective arrangements does leave one aspect underexplored. Clinical literature on conditions like Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias has long documented the phenomenon of anosognosia—a neurological symptom in which a person is genuinely unaware of their own cognitive deficits and, as a result, may resist or oppose intervention not out of informed preference but because the impairment itself prevents them from recognizing their condition. Research has found this lack of insight to be common in dementia and associated with increased risk of harm. The new comments don’t address how a lawyer should navigate that situation—where the client’s opposition to protective action may itself be a product of the very impairment at issue. This is not an argument against the rule’s general approach, but it is a gap worth acknowledging, and one Louisiana’s drafters might consider addressing if the rule is taken up here.
Specific guidance for particular representations. The original rule provided almost nothing on representing minors or clients in criminal or guardianship proceedings. The new comments fill that gap, addressing the special considerations that arise in each of those contexts.
What Louisiana Should Consider
Louisiana Rule 1.14, as it currently stands, reflects the ABA’s 2002 model. The ABA’s updated terminology, its new definition of decision-making limitations, and its clarified guidance on surrogate decision-makers address genuine problems that Louisiana lawyers face in practice. The definition alone—built around the concept of what a client can do with appropriate supports—represents a significant improvement in clarity and should discourage reflexive assumptions that a client with a disability cannot participate meaningfully in the representation.
The question of whether Louisiana will adopt some or all of these changes will presumably go first to the LSBA Rules of Professional Conduct Committee, then to the LSBA House of Delegates, and ultimately to the Louisiana Supreme Court. Louisiana lawyers who work with elderly clients, clients with intellectual or developmental disabilities, or clients involved in interdiction proceedings—which is to say, a great many Louisiana lawyers—have good reason to engage in that process.
