As a young lawyer trying to get new business and clients, Kay Lewis found accountants a good source of referrals. But some of them came with pressure to share her fees with the referring accountant — something she refused.

Lewis is concerned that such pressure would be inevitable with the Special Committee to Improve the Delivery of Legal Services’ conceptual idea to test allowing sharing of fees with nonlawyers.

“If The Florida Bar were to permit such practices, then young attorneys will become prey to seasoned nonlawyers’ pressure. It was a very uncomfortable position to be in, and the only power is to say that it is NOT allowed under the Bar rules,” Lewis wrote to the Bar. “The sharing of fees is a dangerous issue allowing nonlawyers to de facto practice law informally by giving ‘legal’ opinions to clients and then putting the liability on the attorney for anything that goes wrong.”