Plaza A Hilton San Francisco and Towers Lobby Level
Joint Program of Sections on Alternative Dispute Resolution and Professional Responsibility Jacqueline Nolan-Haley, Fordham University, and Chair, Section on Alternative Dispute Resolution Teresa S. Collett, South Texas College of Law, and Chair, Section on Professional Responsibility
ADR and the Professional Responsibility of Lawyers
Moderator:
Jacqueline Nolan-Haley, Fordham University
Speakers:
Robert F. Cochran, Jr., Pepperdine University [View Program Material] Kimberlee K. Kovach, The University of Texas Carrie J. Menkel-Meadow, Georgetown University
The extraordinary growth of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) legal practice and the institutionalization of ADR in the courts over the last twenty-five years has generated a number of complex questions about the professional responsibilities of lawyers who engage in this practice. Some of the ethical issues facing lawyers relate to client counseling, confidentiality, conflicts of interest, duties of good faith and candor, unauthorized practice of law and the impartiality of third party neutrals. The questions raised by these issues implicate lawyers' work as partisan advocate, problem-solver and third party neutral in ADR practice.
The organized bar, through the work of the ABA Ethics 2000 Commission, has struggled to address some of the emerging issues related to lawyer participation in ADR. The Commission's proposals will be presented to the ABA for a first reading at the next annual meeting in July 2001. In the meantime, as legal educators, we face the challenge of preparing our students to engage in "ethical" ADR practice. Do the Model Rules of Responsibility provide us with sufficient guidance? If not, where do we look for guidance for our students and ourselves? This program will explore how we as legal educators, through our scholarship, teaching and practice can guide our students in ethical ADR practice and at the same time, ensure that parties who participate in the ADR legal system are accorded fundamentally fair treatment.