Michael Franck Professional Responsibility Award
Recipient Biographies
Fr. Robert Drinan - 1995 Award Recipient
ABA President George E. Bushnell, Jr. presented the 1995 Michael Franck Professional Responsibility Award to Fr. Robert Drinan of the Georgetown University Law Center during the 1995 ABA Annual Meeting in Chicago. Fr. Drinan was the second recipient of the award, which was created in 1994 and presented at that time to Michael Franck, whose dedication to issues of professional responsibility was especially distinguished by his leadership of the 1975 Clark Commission’s landmark study of lawyer discipline and his pivotal role in the six-year-long development of the Kutak Commission’s Model Rules of Professional Conduct.
Mr. Bushnell’s remarks cited Fr. Drinan’s many accomplishments, including his founding of the Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics and his "gift of conscience to the legal profession."
Fr. Drinan, who is a former member of the United States Congress and a noted writer on legal ethics and champion of individual rights, paid tribute to Michael Franck upon accepting the award and then called upon the legal profession to pay special heed to the critical need for pro bono services. He also took a moment to question the serious ethical implications of judges accepting political contributions from lawyers who come before them.
The complete texts of Mr. Bushnell and Fr. Drinan’s remarks have been published in the 1995 Symposium Issue of the The Professional Lawyer.
Fr. Drinan passed away in 2007 at the age of 86 following a short illness.
Mark I. Harrison - 1996 Award Recipient
Lawyer discipline and lawyer professionalism have been high on Mark I. Harrison’s list of priorities during the last two decades of his very active law practice and equally active and inspiring service to the organized bar at the local, state and national levels.
In accepting the Michael Franck Professional Responsibility Award for 1996, Harrison modestly claimed to be "no Michael Franck and no Bob Drinan," referring to the first two recipients of the award. As those who gathered to honor him at the presentation ceremony were reminded by remarks from former ABA President George Bushnell, Harrison in fact could boast a distinguished record of visionary projects undertaken in the name of improving the nation’s lawyer disciplinary system and raising the profession’s standards of behavior.
Beginning with a visit to Idaho in 1980 to assist in a requested review of that state’s lawyer discipline system, Harrison served over the next dozen years on state discipline system evaluations in Massachusetts, New York, Alaska, Ohio and Washington on behalf of the ABA Standing Committee on Professional Discipline, one of the many ABA Committees for which he served as Chair.
Harrison also has displayed vision and commitment in considering and promoting lawyer professionalism. In 1988 he was chosen to be the Chair of the Special Coordinating Committee on Professionalism, which suggested or initiated many of the projects still directed by today’s Standing Committee on Professionalism. That service also led to his appointment in 1990 to head a working group on a then-developing new issue of lawyers’ operation of "ancillary business."
His careful and creative thinking about the profession were not limited to matters of ethics and regulation, however: he also was asked to chair the ABA’s first Long Range Planning Committee, which introduced improved budgeting and programming philosophies still in place today.
On the state level, Mr. Harrison has served as a member of the Arizona Supreme Court Special Committee on Lawyer Discipline and Professional Conduct, the Arizona State Bar Ethics Committee, the Arizona State Bar Special Committee on the Model Rules of Professional Conduct, and the Arizona State Bar Committee on Professionalism.
Lewis H. Van Dusen, Jr. - 1997 Award Recipient
Lewis H. Van Dusen, a partner in the law
firm of Drinker, Biddle & Reath in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was
awarded the Michael Franck Professional Responsibility Award on August
1, 1997.
Mr. Van Dusen accomplishments spanned more than a half century, and ranged from daring, as a bar leader to publicly challenge corrupt practices within the tight-knit community of the bar to working toward international justice as the first Director of the United States Representation to NATO in the early 1950s. While his broad vision of a lawyer’s responsibility for the quality of justice served as an inspiration to his law firm colleagues, he was singled out to receive the Michael Franck award for the intense focus he brought to the study and literature of legal ethics.
Following in the tradition of his law firm partner Henry S. Drinker, Mr. Van Dusen served on the ABA Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility and its predecessor Standing Committee on Professional Ethics from 1953 to 1956 and from 1962 to 1974. Serving as its chair from 1971 to 1974, he oversaw what was arguably the single biggest step forward in establishing ethical standards for the bar: the development and adoption of the Model Code of Professional Responsibility. During his time of service, the committee also issued what has been described as a "blizzard" of ethics opinions.
Closer to home, Mr. Van Dusen served as president of the Pennsylvania Bar Association and chancellor of the Philadelphia Bar Association, where he also worked to improve ethical standards.
Mr. Van Dusen passed away in 2004 at age 93.
Monroe H. Freedman - 1998 Award Recipient
Professor Monroe H. Freedman was selected as the 1998 receipient of the Michael H. Franck Professional Responsibility Award to honor his lifetime of original and influential scholarship in the field of lawyers' ethics.
The Howard Lichtenstein Distinguished Professor of Legal Ethics at Hofstra University Law School, his scholarship has shaped the debate in legal ethics, beginning with his 1966 article "The Professional Responsibility of the Criminal Defense Lawyer: The Three Hardest Questions."
In addition to being a prolific author, Prof. Freedman has also written several books, including "Lawyers' Ethics in and Adversary System" and "Understanding Lawyers' Ethics."
Although many of Prof. Freedman's ideas were first considered controversial, they have since become an integral part of the law governing lawyers. He was the first scholar to argue that comprehensive restrictions on advertising violated the First Amendment and that they unduly restricted the availability of legal services to citizens who are most in need of information about their legal rights. Another of Prof. Freedman's major contributions is the recognition of the crucial role that the concept of "knowing" has played in ethical rules.
Boston College Law Professor Charles Baron noted in a review of one of Prof. Freedman's books:
"Monroe Freedman is in the grand tradition of Socrates . . . [H]e is essentially a moralist . . . He confesses error on several occasions regarding positions he has taken earlier and anticipates having to do it again on positions he hazards this time around. His is the old-fashioned, philosophical dedication to truth. He is not afraid to admit error, nor to take on sacred cows."
Robert E. O'Malley - 1999 Award Recipient
Robert E. O’Malley of Washington, D.C., received the 1999 Michael Franck Award for outstanding contributions to the field of professional responsibility.
"Bob O’Malley stands out among those lawyers who have worked in recent years to sensitize lawyers in large firms to the centrality and importance of legal ethics," said Burnele V. Powell of Kansas City, Chair of the ABA Center’s Coordinating Council. "He has been spectacularly successful in raising the level of ethics observance of lawyers in that setting."O’Malley was a partner in the D.C. law firm of Covington & Burling from 1969 to 1985. In 1979, he also became vice chairman of the board of ALAS of Chicago, which provides large limit professional liability coverage for large law firms. He was named ALAS’ chief loss prevention counsel in 1985, and moved into the senior advisor position in 1998.
Roger C. Cramton, a professor of law at Cornell Law School, Ithaca, N.Y., explained in nominating O’Malley that his work in organizing, developing and improving the ALAS loss prevention program built on his recognition that preventing legal malpractice and other claims against lawyers was "inextricably tied to promoting the highest standards of ethical awareness and professionalism among (them)."
"Beginning with that insight, he built an organization and program to promote ethical and professional responsibility compliance by the tens of thousands of practicing lawyers insured by ALAS . . . . The hallmark of Bob O’Malley’s approach to legal ethics awareness and professional responsibility is a unique combination of practicality and the highest standards of legal scholarship," said Cramton.
O’Malley has played a unique role in enhancing legal ethics on the part of all sections of the American bar. His educational and public service efforts have reached many outside the world of large law firms. He has taught professional responsibility at Cornell, Georgetown University Law Center and Washington College of Law at American University, and plans to resume law school teaching upon his retirement from ALAS in June 2000. He is a member of the Counsel Responsibility Committee of the ABA Section of Business Law, and a former member of the ABA Standing Committee on Professionalism and the ABA Standing Committee on Lawyers’ Professional Liability.
He participated in the Advisory Council to the ABA Commission on Evaluation of the Rules of Professional Conduct and as an adviser to the American Law Institute Restatement of the Law Governing Lawyers. He was a member of the ALI-ABA Practice Evaluation Project, and past chair of the District of Columbia Bar Legal Ethics Committee.
O’Malley published several scholarly law review articles on ethics and malpractice issues. He is a cum laude graduate of the University of Notre Dame and received his law degree from Northwestern University Law School.
Andrew L. Kaufman - 2000 Award Recipient
Professor Andrew L. Kaufman was selected as the 2000 recipient of the Michael H. Franck Professional Responsibility Award. Professor Kaufman was selected for his substantial contributions to American legal ethics and for his distinguished service to law students, the bench, and the bar.
Described as a "teacher's teacher" and a "lawyer's lawyer," Professor Kaufman began teaching at Harvard Law School in 1965. He served as Associate Dean of the law school from 1986-1989. He is the author of a highly acclaimed biography of Justice Benjamin N. Cardozo, Cardozo (Harvard University Press, 1998). Prior to publishing the book, Professor Kaufman wrote many articles on Justice Cardozo, the Supreme Court and its critics, and is the co-author of Commercial Law (Little, Brown, 2d ed.1989). His course on the legal profession was one of the first in the nation and his Problems in Professional Responsibility (Little, Brown, 3d ed.1989), was the first case book in the field. It appeared in 1976 and now is in its third edition. His teaching interests include the Supreme Court, the legal profession, commercial law, and constitutional law. Professor Kaufman received both his A.B. and LL.B. degrees from Harvard University. After law school, he clerked for Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter and then became partner for several years at Kaufman, Kaufman & Kaufman.
In 1968-70, Professor Kaufman chaired the Association of American Law Schools' (AALS) Special Committee on Professional Responsibilities of Law Teachers. In 1971, he served on the AALS's Special Committee on Judicial Ethics. From 1976 to 1983, he served on the Executive Committee of the AALS Section on Professional Responsibility and acted as chair in 1981 and 1982. He wrote about the new Model Code of Professional Responsibility under the title, "The Lawyers' New Code," 22 Harv. L.S. Bull. 19 (1970), and when Code became the Model Rules, he authored "A Critical First Look at the Model Rules of Professional Conduct," 66 A.B.A.J. 1074 (1980).
Since 1984, he has served on several advisory committees to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, including the Committee on Lawyer Solicitation, the Advisory Committee on Judicial Ethics, the Committee on Certification of Lawyer Specialization, the Model Rules Committee, the Committee on Lawyer Advertising, the Standing Committee on the Model Rules, and the Committee on the Model Code of Judicial Conduct. He has been a member of the Massachusetts Bar Association Committee on Professional Ethics since 1978 and its chairman since 1982. The Committee offered the following description of their chair:
His knowledge of the law pertaining to legal ethics is unsurpassed. That knowledge is a valuable resource to all members of the committee. Yet that knowledge alone does not answer all questions that come before the committee. Andy and other members of the committee often wrestle with novel questions of application of law to facts and difficult issues of judgment. It is in these cases that his commitment to listening carefully to views contrary to his own, to conducting the committee graciously and democratically, and to getting it right even if that means abandoning tentatively held views establish Andy as a true leader and teacher.
John T. Berry - 2001 Award Recipient
John T. Berry, executive director of the State Bar of Michigan, received the American Bar Association's 2001 Michael Franck Professional Responsibility Award.
"John Berry has compiled a distinguished record of leadership in the field of professional regulation and legal ethics. His contributions - addressing both the broad needs and issues of the legal profession and the concerns generated by specific crises - have always reflected an overriding commitment to the public interest," said Dean Burnele Powell of the University of Missouri - Kansas City School of Law, who chaired the Coordinating Council for the ABA Center for Professional Responsibility.
Powell noted that as director of the Legal Division of The Florida Bar, Berry coordinated the state bar's response to the ValuJet plane crash in 1996 in Florida's Everglades. The state bar provided neutral legal information, advice and assistance to the public, creating a system that has become a model for other state bars' mass disaster responses.
It is especially moving, Powell observed, that Berry receives the award as executive director of the State Bar of Michigan. "Now, at the leadership of the very state bar where Michael Franck worked unswervingly to raise the standards of lawyer ethics and disciplinary enforcement, there can be little doubt that Berry is both literally and figuratively an heir to the Michael Frank legacy," he said.Berry was appointed to his position in Michigan last November. Previously, he was director of the Legal Division of The Florida Bar for 15 years and at the Arizona State Bar for two years. In Arizona, he oversaw dramatic and highly-praised changes to the disciplinary system. In 1999, Berry returned to Florida to create and serve as the first director of the Center for Professionalism at the University of Florida, Levin College of Law. The center has among its goals increasing law school interaction with practicing lawyers and judges, and promoting lawyer professionalism.
Berry served on the ABA's Commission on Evaluation of Disciplinary Enforcement, created in 1989 to conduct a nationwide assessment of lawyer discipline and provide a model for responsible regulation of the legal profession for the 21st century. He is a past president of the National Organization of Bar Counsel, and now represents that group in the ABA House of Delegates. He also has served as a member and chair of the ABA Standing Committee on Professionalism.
Raymond R. Trombadore - 2001 Award Recipient
Raymond R. Trombadore of New Jersey was presented the 2001 Michael Franck Award for Professional Responsibility. Ray's lifelong accomplishments in the field of professional responsibility are well documented and unparalleled. "He has been dedicated to the field of professional responsibility since the beginning of his career," noted Center for Professional Responsibility Coordinating Council Chair Burnele V. Powell. "Through his service on many commissions and committees, he has helped shape professional ethics for the 21st century."
Trombadore was president of the New Jersey State Bar Association, on the Executive Council of the National Conference of Bar Presidents, as well as a member of the ABA House of Delegates. His greatest contribution is, of course, his service as member and chair of the McKay Commission, the ABA Commission on Evaluation of Disciplinary Enforcement. When the Commission Chair Robert B. McKay passed away, Ray stepped up as chair. The resulting report adopted by the ABA House of Delegates serves as the model of lawyer discipline in this country. As chair of the ABA Standing Committee on Professional Discipline, he carried on the work of implementing in every state a lawyer regulatory system that is fair, efficient, and effective. He tirelessly advocated lawyer regulation that inspires public confidence and helps lawyers under the auspices of an independent judiciary.
Mr. Trombadore passed away in 2002 following a long illness.
M. Peter Moser - 2002 Award Recipient
M. Peter Moser, who practiced law in Baltimore since 1950, is the 2002 recipient of the Michael Franck Award for Professional Responsibility.
"Peter Moser has rendered profound service to the American public through his insistence that the legal profession look critically at the most complex ethical questions as they develop, putting the interests of clients, the courts and ultimately justice itself ahead of the interests of lawyers. He has coupled his commitment to principle and honesty with an appreciation of the realities of legal practice, helping the ABA to serve the profession through an unfaltering allegiance to the public trust," said Burnelle Powell, chair of the Coordinating Council for the ABA Center for Professional Responsibility.Of counsel with the firm of Piper Rudnick LLP, Moser was a partner in the firm of Frank, Bernstein, Conaway & Goldman for 35 years. He also served as assistant state’s attorney for Baltimore City and a judge advocate on active duty in Korea.
For most of his career, Moser has been involved with lawyer discipline and professional responsibility issues. In the ABA, he has been a member of the Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility for a total of 13 years, chaired the committee for five of those years, and is its liaison to the ABA Commission on Multijurisdictional Practice that recently issued recommendations to reform unauthorized practice of law regulations. He also was a member of the ethics committee’s Judicial Code Subcommittee, which revised the national model for state judicial ethics codes, and has been a member since 1997 of the Advisory Group to the ABA Ethics 2000 Commission, which revised model ethics standard for lawyers.Moser is a past treasurer of the ABA. As a member of the ABA Board of Governors, he was board liaison to the association’s Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility, as well as to the ABA/BNA Lawyers' Manual on Professional Responsibility and the ABA Standing Committee on Lawyers Responsibility for Client Protection.
He has chaired the ABA Finance Committee, served on the Executive Committee and acted as liaison to numerous other association entities. He has been a member of the ABA policy-making House of Delegates, a member of the board of The American Bar Foundation and Amerian Bar Foundation president.
Moser is a member of the Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers and the American Law Institute, where he was an advisor to a group writing the Restatement of the Law Governing Lawyers. He has taught professional responsibility and other courses at the University of Maryland and University of Baltimore schools of law and published articles and participated in programs and symposia on lawyer screening, client confidences, conflicts of interest, multijurisdictional practice and other legal profession issues.
He has served as president of the Maryland State Bar Association and the Bar Association of Baltimore City. He has served on the Maryland association’s Joint Committee on Gender Equality in the Courts and its Ethics 2000 Committee, and has chaired or served on numerous other committees of both associations.
Moser chaired the Maryland State Ethics Commission and the Attorney Grievance Commission of Maryland, which he helped establish along with Maryland’s statewide lawyer disciplinary system, and has served on court of appeals committees to study the Model Rules of Professional Conduct. Elected to the Maryland Constitutional Convention in 1967, he chaired its committee on local government.
He also has served on the Permanent Commission on Municipal Courts, the Baltimore City Planning Commission, the Regional Planning Council, the Mayor’s Task Force on Equal Employment Opportunity, the Metropolitan Transit Authority Advisory Council, the Citizens Advisory Committee on the District Court and the District 1 Advisory Board for the Public Defender System.
He has served locally on the board of Life Bridge Health Systems; the Jewish Big Brother League of Baltimore, Inc.; the Jewish Community Federation of Baltimore; the Baltimore Jewish Community Center; the Baltimore Area Girl Scout Council and other community organizations.
Charles W. Kettlewell - 2003 Award Recipient
Ohio lawyer Charles W. Kettlewell is the recipient of the 2003 Michael Franck Professional Responsibility Award.
Founder and first President of the Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers (APRL), Kettlewell was instrumental in establishing a national and international forum for lawyers concerned about professional responsibility issues. Kettlewell also served as President of the National Organization of Bar Counsel and has been a leader in American Bar Associations activities related to professional responsibility. He has served as a member of the ABA Standing Committees on Professional Discipline and Lawyer Responsibility for Client Protection; ABA Commission on the Evaluation of Disciplinary Enforcement (the "McKay Commission"); ABA Joint Committee on Professional Sanctions; and ABA/BNA Lawyers' Manual on Professional Conduct.
A former Assistant Disciplinary Counsel in Ohio, Kettlewell has authored more than 1600 advisory opinions for lawyers and has served as a consultant and testifying expert on nearly 200 malpractice cases. A speaker at many educational programs, Kettlewell has taught the Professional Responsibility course at Ohio State University School of Law since 1977 and is the former Director of Law Institutes at Capital University Law School (1983-1985). He has served as an ethics columnist for Trial magazine and publishes an ethics case digest for Ohio lawyers. He has also been instrumental in the development and presentation of international conferences dealing with international legal ethics and risk management issues in Shanghai, China and Florence, Italy.
In private practice since 1985, Kettlewell focused on lawyer ethics and disciplinary matters. He served as a member of the American Bar Association; ABA Center for Professional Responsibility; Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers (APRL); National Organization of Bar Counsel (NOBC); Ohio State Bar Association; Columbus Bar Association; and Oregon State Bar Association. He is a fellow of the American Bar Foundation; Ohio State Bar Foundation; and Columbus Bar Foundation.
Mr. Kettlewell passed away in 2005 following a short illness.
E. Norman Veasey - 2005 Award Recipient
E. Norman Veasey is a senior partner at Weil Gotshal and serves as a strategic adviser to the firm's roster of prominent global clients on a wide range of issues related to mergers and acquisitions, restructuring and litigation. Additionally, he advises on corporate governance issues involving the responsibilities of corporate directors in complex financial transactions and crisis management.
Mr. Veasey is the former Chief Justice of Delaware, having stepped down from the Delaware Supreme Court in May 2004, after serving for 12 years as the top judicial officer and administrator of that state's judicial branch. During his tenure as Chief Justice, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce ranked Delaware's courts first in the nation for three consecutive years for their fair, reasonable and efficient litigation environment. Justice Veasey has also been credited with leading nationwide programs to restore professionalism to the practice of law and adopt best practices in the running of America's courts. He was awarded the Order of the First State by Delaware Governor Ruth Ann Minner, the highest honor for meritorious service the state's governor can grant.
Justice Veasey was President of the Conference of Chief Justices, Chair of the Board of the National Center for State Courts, Chair of the Section of Business Law of the American Bar Association and Chair of the American Bar Association's Special Committee on Evaluation of the Rules of Professional Conduct (Ethics 2000). He is a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers and Chair-elect of the Committee on Corporate Laws of the Section of Business Law of the American Bar Association.
During 1992-93 he was the editor of Volume 48 of The Business Lawyer, the scholarly legal journal published by the Section of Business Law of the ABA. He was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Laws Degree from Widener University in 1993. In 1995 he was awarded the Dartmouth College Class of 1954 Award; in 1996 he received the Lewis F. Powell, Jr. Award for Professionalism and Ethics from the American Inns of Court Foundation; in 2000 he received the Alumni Award of Merit from the University of Pennsylvania; in 2001 he received the St. Thomas More Society Award; he received the 2002 National Center for State Courts' Paul C. Reardon Award; and in 2002 he received the First Annual Ethics Award from the American Corporate Counsel Association. In 2003, he received an Honorary Doctor of Laws Degree from the University of Delaware. Also in 2003, he was elected to the Warren E. Burger Society of the National Center for State Courts. In 2004, the Governor of Delaware awarded Chief Justice Veasey with the Order of the First State.
From 1957 until he took office as Chief Justice in 1992, Mr. Veasey practiced law with the Wilmington, Delaware, law firm of Richards, Layton and Finger, where he concentrated on business law, corporate transactions, litigation, and counseling. He served at various times as managing partner and the chief executive officer of the firm. During 1961-63, he was Deputy Attorney General and Chief Deputy Attorney of the State of Delaware. In 1982-83, he was president of the Delaware State Bar Association.
Mr. Veasey is a director of the Institute for Law and Economics at the University of Pennsylvania, a member of the American Law Institute, a member of the International Advisory Board of the Centre for Corporate Law and Securities Regulation and numerous other professional organizations. He is a frequent panelist and lecturer on the corporation law, corporate governance, ethics and professionalism.
Mr. Veasey received his A.B. degree from Dartmouth College in 1954 and his LL.B. degree from the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1957. At the University of Pennsylvania Law School, he was a member of the Board of Editors and the Senior Editor of the University of Pennsylvania Law Review.
Deborah L. Rhode - 2006 Award Recipient
Deborah L. Rhode is the Ernst W. McFarland Professor of Law and Director of the Stanford Center on Ethics at Stanford Law School.
Professor Rhode has been a leader in establishing legal ethics and professionalism in the curriculums of law schools throughout the country. Her many accomplishments include service as president of the Association of American Law Schools and chair of the ABA Commission on Women in the Profession.
She has been a member of the Stanford faculty since 1979 and visiting professor at Harvard, Columbia and Fordham law schools. She also served as senior counsel to Minority Members, Judiciary Committee, U.S. House of Representatives, Cooperating Attorney for the ACLU, and clerk to Judge Murray I. Gurfein of the U.S. Court of Appeals, Second Circuit and Justice Thurgood Marshall, U.S. Supreme Court.
Among other honors, she was a recipient of the American Bar Foundation’s W.M. Keck Foundation Award for Distinguished Scholarship on Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility.
Her many published works include Pro Bono in Principle and in Practice, Legal Ethics with David Luban; Professional Responsibility and Regulation with Geoffrey Hazard, Ethics in Practice; and Professional Responsibility: Ethics by the Pervasive Method. Her areas of focus include not only professional responsibility, but also gender and the law, and public policy.
Lawrence J. Fox - 2007 Award Recipient
“[His]…. passion for professionalism has
uplifted the aspirations and conduct of the legal community.”
“With insight, humor, enormous energy and unclouded vision, he
is the constant conscience of the practicing bar….”
Norma L. Shapiro, Senior Judge
United States District Court
Eastern District of Pennsylvania
Among his many professional accomplishments, Lawrence J. Fox was instrumental in the creation and served as an active member of the ABA Commission on the Evaluation of the Rules of Professional Conduct (Ethics 2000). The work of the Commission has served to advance the role of professional responsibility law in the administration of justice, notes Jeanne P. Gray, director of the ABA Center for Professional Responsibility.
Mr. Fox has also served as chair of the ABA Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility and the Planning Committee for the annual ABA National Conference on Professional Responsibility. In other ABA roles, he served as chair of the ABA Section of Litigation, Section Officers Conference and Post-Conviction Death Penalty Representation Project. He was the 2005 recipient of the ABA Pro Bono Publico Award.
His appearances across the country include participating in numerous continuing legal education programs and lectures or classes at over 35 law schools. Television appearances include ABC News’ Nightline, CNN’s Crossfire, Talk Back Live and Burden of Proof, and NBC’s The Today Show on topics covering a wide range of professional responsibility issues. Internationally, he has visited Argentina, Italy and The People’s Republic of China as a specialist and speaker on the role and rights of lawyers.
He is the author of the book Legal Tender: A Lawyers’ Guide to Professional Dilemmas and the co-author of the books Traversing the Ethical Minefield: Problems, Law, and Professional Responsibility; Red Flags: A Lawyer’s Handbook on Legal Ethics; and Your Lawyer: A User’s Guide with Professor Susan R. Martyn. In addition, he has written numerous articles that have appeared in national law reviews, professional publications, and state and local bar journals. In a joint letter of recommendation for the Michael Franck Award, Professor Martyn and Los Angeles attorney Diane Karpman stated that “We find it difficult to imagine another person who has generated so much interest in professional responsibility or who has influenced so many.”
Lawrence J. Fox is a partner at the Philadelphia firm of Drinker Biddle and Reath LLP (since 1976) and specializes in corporate and securities litigation. He served as Managing Partner (1987-1989, 1991-1998) and is the former chair of the firm’s Professional Responsibility Committee. More
Geoffrey C. Hazard, Jr. - 2008 Award Recipient
“Geoffrey Hazard is a towering figure in American law and he has placed an indelible imprint on legal ethics and professional conduct.”
Philip S. Anderson
1998-1999 President
American Bar Association
A renowned teacher, author and advisor, Geoffrey C. Hazard Jr. is the Thomas E. Miller Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of California Hastings College of the Law. He has taught civil procedure, legal ethics and federal jurisdiction at law schools since 1958, including Boalt Hall (University of California, Berkeley), the University of Chicago, Yale University, and the University of Pennsylvania. His service to the American Bar Association includes appointments to the Special Commission on Evaluation of Professional Standards (the “Kutak Commission”), Ethics 2000 Commission, Special Committee on the Code of Judicial Conduct; Special Commission on the Standards of Judicial Administration, and the Resource Team for High Profile Trials. He also serves as senior advisor to the ABA Section of Business Law. He has served as a member of the Standing Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedures for the Judicial Conference of the United States and on its Ad Hoc Committee on Mass Torts. He has been the executive director of both the American Bar Foundation (1964-1970) and the American Law Institute (1984-1999).
His publications include co-author of a treatise and a casebook in civil procedure and professional ethics and author or co-author of numerous books and articles. His professional awards in acknowledgment of his accomplishments include the Ceremony of Salute from the Superior Court of Pennsylvania, the Gold Medal from the International Insolvency Institute and the Kutak Award from the American Bar Association Section of Legal Education.
