Need Help on Professionalism Training in Your Office? Call Us.
by Alan Sullivan
Would you like to provide training to lawyers in your office or agency on the Utah Standards of Professionalism and Civility? Do you need a set of tried and true presentation materials to assist you? Then call us.
More than two years ago the Utah Supreme Court established the Utah Professionalism Liaison Committee to help lawyers, law offices, bar associations, and agencies train lawyers in professionalism. The Liaison Committee was reconstituted and reactivated in May 2006, and since then it has developed a library of materials used by law firms, agencies and local bar associations to teach the principles of professionalism to lawyers in both litigation and transactional practices. Our "library" of materials is electronic. It includes articles, cases, PowerPoint presentations and fact scenarios designed to stimulate discussion among lawyers. And it's all free. If you would like to obtain materials to use in the training of lawyers on professionalism issues, just call or email me, and I'll send the materials back to electronically, on one condition. The condition is that you provide me with whatever new materials you utilize as part of your own presentation, assuming that they do not involve confidential information. In this way, we hope to expand our electronic library for use by others.
Another of the Liaison Committee's objectives involves enforcement of the standards and the remediation or counseling of offenders. We would appreciate your ideas on how violations of the Standards of Professionalism and Civility should be reported and remediated. The standards are aspirational rather than prescriptive; when a violation occurs, there is usually more than one side to the story; and the client may well need to consent when any lawyer reports any other lawyer for violation of the Standards of Professionalism and Civility. Despite these obvious problems involved in enforcement, we are searching for effective ways to get the word to lawyers who have committed clear infractions of our professionalism standards. If you have some ideas on this score, please let us know.
Also, if you'd like to be a member of the Liaison Committee, all you need to do is call or write me, and I'll make sure you're on our regular mailing list and are invited to our meetings, which happen every six months.