CBA Record July-August 2021

LEGAL ETHICS BY JOHN LEVIN

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Valedictory T he Legal Ethics column has been part of the CBA Record for decades. I have written it since 2003. I have enjoyed the intellectual exercise and hope readers have found the columns useful and, perhaps at times, enlightening. However, the time has come to has come for someone else to take over. My reason for stepping down is very simple – legal ethics is much more than an academic subject. It also involves an intuitive understanding of what it is like to practice law at a given time – the challenges and stresses experienced every day by lawyers. I passed the bar in 1968 and retired from the active practice in 2002 and believe that I no longer have that intuitive understanding. Let me expand. For most of my working career, if you were away from a telephone, you were out of touch with the demands of the office and of clients and could focus on life at that moment. In 1968, a large law firm had perhaps 40 lawyers, and multistate or multinational law firms were barely imagined. The body of statutory law and regulations was far smaller than today (the entire Internal Revenue Code could be printed in a single paperback volume). Law was profession, not a business. And the internet was not even a topic of science fiction. A review of these columns over the years will show how much has changed. As examples: 1. Smart phones and email have made the office a permanent part of a lawyer’s envi- ronment, making it almost impossible to relax and de-stress.

2. The volume of both case and statutory law has exponentially increased, making it impossible to be a generalist. 3. The laudable desire of the profession to serve the underserved community stimulated the creation of alternative legal service providers focusing on lim- ited services, but nevertheless competing with lawyers. 4. The economics of the law business have changed, creating new groups of winners and losers. 5. Lawyers must now become knowledge- able and proficient in the application of technology to their practice – in addi- tion to being knowledgeable about the law itself. 6. Even as you read this, the ABA and many state bar associations are reviewing their Codes of Professional Conduct to address some of the above issues to make the Codes relevant to the changing times. While changing times are interesting to study and write about, they are more vital if you are actually experiencing them. It has been a privilege to author this column for the past 19 years. Thank you to the editorial board of the CBA Record for the opportunity to share my thoughts and insights and to the readership of the CBA Record for your interest and feedback. But it is time to turn this column over to a new author – one who is more acutely attuned to the current realities of day-to- day practice and who can help guide the current generation of lawyers through the ethical complexities and challenges that they face.

John Levin is the retiredAssistant General Counsel of GATXCorporation and a member of the CBARecord Editorial Board.

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