Law Commons^™

Bar Association Ethics Committees: Are They Broken Conference On Legal Ethics: What Needs Fixing, Bruce A. Green

Faculty Scholarship

This Article explores the work of bar association ethics committees. These are committees established by bar associations to give advice to lawyers about how to comply with the applicable rules of professional conduct. My question is, are these committees broken? Over the past two decades, several legal academics have concluded that they are. At its harshest, the critique is that ethics committees, typified by the American Bar Association's ("ABA") ethics committee, publish opinions that respond to trivial questions by providing poorly reasoned answers on which nobody can or does rely, and that the reason that the committees' opinions are inadequate …