Legal Ethics & Professional Responsibility Litigation

Our Best Law Firms Tier 1-ranked Legal Ethics & Professional Responsibility Group provides litigation services and counseling to lawyers and law firms on sensitive ethical, professional responsibility, and business matters. We have successfully defended lawyers facing disciplinary charges, malpractice allegations, disqualification and other issues.

CLIENTS

We represent lawyers, law firms, and corporate legal departments in New York and throughout the U.S.

CLIENT BENEFITS

We help law firms and attorneys respond to malpractice allegations, disciplinary complaints, and disqualification and sanctions motions, and we have had great success overturning adverse findings and orders. We also have expertise in the evolving area of law firm partnership agreements and disputes - including partnership dissolution and other delicate matters:

Malpractice and Fraud

We defend small, mid-size, and large law firms against legal malpractice allegations brought by former clients and misconduct claims by adversaries and regulators.

Discipline

We represent lawyers before the disciplinary committees of all four New York appellate division judicial departments, and we help New York and out-of-state lawyers win admission to the bar and, when necessary, reinstatement.

Sanctions

We defend lawyers facing disqualification motions, contempt proceedings, and Rule 11, Rule 130-1.1, and other court-ordered sanctions.

Partnership

We counsel attorneys on existing partnership matters and in the structuring of new firms, and we help negotiate and draft partnership and other corporate operating agreements.

Disputes

We help lawyers handle partnership disputes over compensation, client relationships, mergers, firm finance and management, and other issues.

Departures, Transitions and Dissolutions

We advise individual lawyers on lateral transitions, and we help firms respond to partner departures and structure dissolutions and “wind downs.”

Fee Disputes

We prosecute and defend fee disputes.

Ethics Counseling and Opinions

We provide CLE presentations in ethics, and we counsel lawyers and law firms on conflicts of interest, litigation conduct, ethical screens, retainer and fee agreements, escrow matters, and other issues.

Law Firm Marketing

We have helped bar committees draft disciplinary rules governing law firm advertising and marketing, and we are well-placed to assist law firms in their efforts to comply with these new rules.

Expert Services

We serve as expert witnesses in legal malpractice cases, fee disputes, disqualification and sanctions motions, and other disputes involving attorney conduct.

PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATIONS

We chair the New York State Bar’s Committee on Professional Discipline, and the New York County Lawyers Association (NYCLA)’s Federal Courts Committee, and we are members of NYCLA’s Committee on Professionalism and Professional Discipline.  We co-chair the Ethics Committee of the Women’s Bar Association of the State of New York, and the New York Women’s Bar Association, and are members of  the New York City Bar’s Committee on Professional Ethics, and the Committee on Standards of Attorney Conduct (COSAC.) We co-chair the Attorneys’ Liability Subcommittee of the ABA Professional Liability Litigation Committee. We have taught ethics and professional responsibility at New York University School of Law, Fordham Law School, Brooklyn Law School and the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. In the past we have served on the Committee on Professional Discipline of the New York City Bar, on the Committee on Professional and Judicial Ethics, and on the Board of Directors of the Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers. We have written and lectured extensively on the law of lawyering, the attorney-client privilege, transactional and other conflicts of interest, and ethical duties of lawyer-directors, multijurisdictional practice, and the obligations of departing law partners. We are co-authors of Simon’s New York Rules of Professional Conduct Annotated, and co-editors of the New York Legal Ethics Reporter.