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Originally published in Student
Lawyer magazine, November 2005 (Vol. 34, No. 3). All rights
reserved.
Hot Practice
In this field, lawyers are the ones who seek counsel
ABA Resources on Lawyer Liability, Ethics,
and Professional Responsibility
by Lisa Stansky
When lawyers think of clients, they usually do not have their colleagues
in mind. Yet an entire realm of practice exists where lawyers themselves
are the clients. There are lawyers who prosecute, defend, and advise
their colleagues in disciplinary proceedings, legal malpractice
actions, and day-to-day questions involving professional ethics
and responsibility.
“I don’t think that it’s something law students
ordinarily think of doing as a career,” says Kathleen Ewins,
co-chair of the ABA Section of Litigation’s professional liability
litigation committee. “It’s really rewarding and interesting.”
Most of Ewins’ practice involves defending lawyers and judges
against disciplinary claims. A very small amount of her lawyer-related
work concerns legal malpractice. Getting lawyers and judges out
of trouble has been Ewins’ focus since graduating from law
school, when she signed on with Long & Levit in San Francisco.
Because legal malpractice claims stem from lawyers’ work
for clients on any number of topics, lawyers who defend against
such lawsuits are exposed to diverse areas of substantive law, Ewins
explains.
Insurance defense firms that handle legal malpractice claims provide
a good way to break into the field, says James Geoffrey Durham,
chair of the ethics and professionalism committee of the ABA Section
of Real Property, Probate, and Trust Law.
Durham, a University of Dayton law professor, points out that
every state also has at least one firm or a practice group within
a firm that defends lawyers facing discipline or malpractice claims.
Some boutique firms specialize in the field, Ewins adds.
The other side of legal malpractice litigation involves lawyers
who represent clients in malpractice claims against attorneys. According
to lawyers interviewed for this article, many malpractice claims
spin off from other disputes, such as battles over legal fees. They
also point out that the lawyers who prosecute these suits against
their colleagues rarely promote this aspect of their practice.
One way to do legal ethics as a career is to work for the state
entity in charge of lawyer discipline, Durham says. The state supreme
court is the ultimate arbiter of lawyers’ professional discipline,
but the agency that pursues these charges may reside in the judicial
or state bar system, he adds.
Many lawyers weave professional ethics issues into their practice
by providing ethics guidance to a law firm, whether as a member
of the firm or as outside counsel. Most large firms have at least
one lawyer who specializes in answering colleagues’ questions
about ethical dilemmas, Durham says.
“Become a guru of ethics in your practice area,” suggests
John Steele, chair of the ethics and professional responsibility
committee of the ABA Section of Intellectual Property Law. On this
score, the ABA offers many opportunities to get involved with committees
that focus on ethics issues in relation to a specific practice area.
Most ABA sections have a committee devoted to the ethics and professionalism
issues that crop up in their practice areas, Durham says.
An increasing number of law firms are moving to secure counsel
who deal with ethics problems or stop them before they start. That
is part of Steele’s work with Fish & Richardson of Redwood
City, Calif. He focuses on the ethics and professional responsibility
angles of the firm’s internal business matters, including
contracts, insurance, and risk management.
The government is another career option for lawyers who want to
specialize in legal ethics. After years with the National Labor
Relations Board, Lori Ketcham is now that agency’s first special
ethics counsel, a post she has held since 2002. Ketcham also is
co-chair of the ethics and professional responsibility committee
of the ABA Section of Labor and Employment Law.
Her job at NLRB is to make sure the agency’s lawyers operate
inside the bounds of ethical and professional conduct when investigating
and pursuing cases. A large part of her work involves developing
policies to guide lawyers and investigators when they have contact
with outside individuals who are represented by counsel. She also
fields questions about ethics from lawyers who work for the agency’s
regional offices.
Ketcham’s co-chair at the ABA is Steven Woodrow Moore, a
management-side labor and employment lawyer in Denver. On occasion,
he has represented lawyers facing disciplinary action.
Moore’s advice: Join the ABA Center for Professional Responsibility,
where you can meet lawyers and develop focus and expertise in the
area.
Indeed, it was a state bar project that boosted the practice niche
of Memphis lawyer Lucian Pera, who represents lawyers and law firms
on ethics issues. “You just start getting one call after another,
and one thing leads to another,” Pera says of his work compiling
ethics opinions for the Tennessee state bar. Today, Pera stays active
with the bar through co-chairing the professional conduct committee
of the ABA Section of Business Law.
Steele points out that those who delve into the field also become
familiar with the intricacies of law practice.
“The reward is that you learn a wider range of issues in
your specialty . . . ,” he says. “You learn the limits
of advocacy. You also learn the snares and traps for the unwary,
so you have an accelerated learning [curve] of how decent lawyers
sometimes stumble.”
Lisa Stansky (ljstansky@cs.com)
is a lawyer and freelance writer.
Are you interested in other fields of law? Read previous Hot
Practice columns online at www.abanet.org/lsd/studentlawyer.
ABA Resources on Lawyer Liability, Ethics,
and Professional Responsibility
The Center
for Professional Responsibility is the first stop for
ABA members who want to learn about the field. Other ABA sections
that have committees on professional liability, ethics, and professional
responsibility include:
Section
of Antitrust Law
Section
of Business Law
Section
of Dispute Resolution
Section
of Family Law
General
Practice, Solo, and Small Firm Division
Government
and Public Sector Lawyers Division
Section
of Intellectual Property Law
Judicial
Division
Section
of Labor and Employment Law
Section
of Litigation
Section
of Public Contract Law
Section
of Real Property, Probate, and Trust Law
Section
of State and Local Government Law
Tort
Trial & Insurance Practice Section
Young
Lawyers Division
Customize your membership
ABA law student members can receive informative publications, invitations
to meetings with lawyers, access to online forums, and other
resources by joining an ABA section—often free
of charge or at a reduced rate. To add a section to your
member profile,
call 800-285-2221 or visit www.abanet.org/join.
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