John,This exact set-up turned out not to be workable since the CWG is not a party (nor is it a part of a party like a board committee). Nonetheless, I believe that the substance of this email is carried out in the current set-up.GregOn Mon, Mar 9, 2015 at 11:27 PM, John Poole <jp1@expri.com> wrote:Jonathan, Greg, et al:
Note that my reaction to today's disclosure that "ICANN is the client" was based, in part, on Greg Shatan's email to Kieren McCarthy in February:
Kieren,
I don't think it is foolish at all to have ICANN pay for the independent
advice. It is not uncommon for one party to pay the bill and for another
party to be the client. It's not even uncommon to have a board committee
of a corporation hire independent counsel where the committee's interests
are divergent from the corporation (e.g., when dealing with an internal
investigation) and have the corporation pay. These are situations that law
firms are comfortable handling. Basically, the question is "who is the
client?" and the client would be the Working Group(s), not ICANN. The law
firm's ethical "duty of loyalty" is to the client . . .The above was my understanding, until today, of the terms under which independent legal counsel would be retained. There are no "pitchforks" intended here--at least not from me.Best regards,John Poole