FBAR fundraiser and ethical responsibility of tax lawyers to clients with foreign account problems‏

It does seem to me, that a practitioner has a first responsibility to their client and not the IRS ! They should present all the various options available for compliance and the risks associated with each, depending on their client’s facts. This doesn’t necessarily mean that they have to covertly compel the client to choose the IRS favorite route over another to reach a compliance objective. I don’t see it as an attorney’s obligation to tell the client they have to join the OVDP, as the only approved route for offshore compliance.
Some lawyers have admitted that they feared being accused of “Circular 230″ violations if they did NOT advise clients to go into OVDP. Really ? So, OVDP lawyer – let me get this straight: You are advising a client to enter OVDP, because you believe that if you don’t, that you are in violation of IRS rules of conduct. What about the ABA rules of professional responsibility? Don’t they require you to disclose all legal options to the client? Don’t they require you to represent the interests of the client? If a client comes to you, who do you think you are representing? The client, the IRS or yourself?
Let me put it this way:
Any person with a license to practise law, who does not educate and counsel the client in terms of all legal options is NOT ACTING AS A LAWYER SHOULD !
 “QD with a microphone” is:
- consistent with the Dec 11 FS
- really not much different from “traditional voluntary disclosure”

If you accept that a lawyer has ethical obligations to the client which include:
- determining the client’s facts,
- researching the law,
- advising the client on whatever existing legal options may be available,
- allowing the client to decide which legal option he wants to pursue
- then assisting the client in pursuing the chosen legal option

then a tax lawyer who fails to do this may be guilty of professional negligence. It would be very interesting to have some lawyers comment on what they see as their ethical obligations to the client.
Ethical Representation of Clients With Foreign Account Problems
This is a spinoff question from the thread titled Another FBAR Conviction. Another advisor indicated that his firm’s policy is not to assist clients with so-called quiet disclosures (QDs), at least in connection with foreign assets. As I understand it, they acknowledge that taxpayers have every right to make QDs, but they fear the the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) would impose some form of discipline, e.g., because sending in returns “quietly,” hoping no one will notice, seems a bit “sneaky.”
Putting aside the question of whether OPR could justifiably punish tax advisors merely for assisting clients in taking permissible actions they have every lawful right to take, there’s a huge ethical problem here.
My view is that, if a tax advisor (for reasons relating to the tax advisor’s own self-interest) is unwilling to advise his clients of all permissible, legal options that may benefit the client (such a QD), he can’t properly and ethically advise that client.

I think it’s a uniquely “IRS mindset” that something is impermissible solely because the IRS doesn’t like it.
There is no rule against quiet disclosures. If the assertion is that such a rule exists merely because the IRS doesn’t like them, that’s (to use a technical term) way out there.
I also strongly disagree with the statement that “the IRS has said not to do it this way.” The IRS has emphasized that, if one makes a QD, all of their options (civil and criminal) are on the table. And they seemingly have tried to intimidate people who probably have no business being in the program into joining for fear that the IRS will assert the worst, regardless of the true facts. But nowhere has the IRS ever said “not to do it this way.” And nowhere has the IRS articulated any rule that would be violated — by either a taxpayer or the taxpayer’s tax advisor — if a QD is made.
If the assertion is that IRS preference constitutes a rule that taxpayers or their advisors must follow, I’m in utter shock that anyone could actually believe that.