Ethical Issues Highlight Year’s Final Dean’s Speakers Series

By Chuck Carlson

April 4, 2023

Legal ethics attorney Trisha Rich spoke to a group of MSU Law students Monday as part of the final Dean's Speaker Series event of the school year.

In the final installment of the second annual Dean’s Speakers Series Monday titled, “Ethics and the Global Law Firm,” legal ethics attorney Trisha Rich made it clear that lawyers are just like everyone else.

“Lawyers and law firms have no shortage of ways of getting themselves in trouble,” she said, as MSU law students laughed.

She continued.

“Half of my practice is representing lawyers and law firms,” she said, citing legal issues such as law firm mergers, bankruptcies and sanctions.

Then there are the issues facing individual lawyers such as DWIs, improper relations with clients and, what she said she deals with the most, trust account violations and stealing from clients.

Rich is a partner in the global law firm Holland & Knight and a national leader in the legal ethics community. She founded and coordinates the Attorney Defense Initiative, the nation’s first privately sponsored pro bono initiative that focuses on assisting impaired lawyers facing disciplinary charges.

And it is a position that has kept her busy.

A University of Michigan law school graduate, she is also president of the Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers, the nation’s largest legal ethics bar organization, and she is a frequent speaker and author on a variety of issues related to ethics and risk management.

Rich brought a light, humorous, informative take to a Q&A session that saw some 20 students in attendance. She fielded questions first from MSU College of Law Dean Linda Sheryl Greene, who introduced Rich as someone who “makes a difference in everything she touches.”

Through her anecdotes and experiences over the years, she made it clear that issues of legal ethics are an issue and that new lawyers have to navigate a minefield of legal issues, uncertainty and human nature.

“Lawyers get in trouble for all kinds of things,” she said.

She cited several rules lawyers must live by ethically, including one that says, “You’re always a lawyer. You always have to be honest,” she said.

She also made sure the students knew that when it came to taking their Bar exam, “Get out in front of an issue if you know of one. Be absolutely candid in your paperwork to the Bar.”

Dean Greene also announced that the series will return in the fall.

MSU College of Law Dean Linda Sheryl Greene listens as legal ethics attorney Trisha Rich speaks to MSU Law students Monday on the ethical challenges facing lawyers and law firms.