About me

I'm a legal ethics consultant and lawyer based in Phoenix, Arizona. I focus on my solo law practice on professional-responsibility issues.

Here are some relevant law-related facts about me. I:

• Have taught so many continuing-legal-education seminars that I could make a fortune selling my extra ethics CLE credits to lawyers. (That's a joke, people. It would be unethical to do that.)

• Spent almost 15 years with the State Bar of Arizona. My last title was Director of Special Services & Ethics/Deputy General Counsel. I spent the last decade of my time with the State Bar as its ethics counsel, which means that, among other duties, I advised lawyers on resolving ethical dilemmas and served as counsel to the State Bar Committee on the Rules of Professional Conduct.

• Served as expert consultant to the Arizona Supreme Court's 2014-15 comprehensive ethical-rules review effort and to the Court’s recent Task Force on the Delivery of Legal Services.

• Was a charter member of the Arizona Supreme Court's Attorney Regulation Advisory Committee, which the court created to help it, as the court's website says, "on issues relating to attorney regulation” — discipline, admissions, ethics and the other day-to-day rules lawyers live by.

• Am a former member of the American Bar Association's Center for Professional Responsibility CLE and Policy Implementation committees.

• Have worked as a bar counsel in the State Bar’s Lawyer Regulation Office, investigating and, if necessary, prosecuting ethical rule violations.

• Wrote the chapter on ethics in the State Bar’s Arizona Attorney’s Fees Manual (and absolutely love talking about fees and fee agreements), and was an editor and writer for the third edition of the State Bar’s Arizona Legal Ethics Handbook.

• Have taught professional responsibility as an adjunct professor at the Arizona State University Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law for more than a decade.

• Understand the real world of law practice. I've worked in big- and medium-sized firms and as a sole practitioner, focusing on media and intellectual property law and civil and appellate litigation. I've also served as a settlement judge pro tem.