This is in response to your request for an advisory opinion from the Alabama Judicial
Inquiry Commission. Your question is:

“Does the trial judge have the duty to disclose to parties in a bench trial of
a civil case that he was a former partner in the practice of law with an
attorney representing some parties in the case, when that partnership was
terminated more than nine years prior to the trial of the case, and where
the trial judge has no further interest in the former partnership or in any
attorney’s fees earned during that partnership?”