Proactive Management Based Regulation – Will It Ever Happen in Illinois?
The traditional approach to attorney regulation in this country has been a reactive—rather than a proactive one. Lawyers are subject to discipline if their conduct fails to comply with the Model Rules of Professional Conduct outlined by the American Bar Association.
Proactive Management Based Regulation (“PMBR”), on the other hand, contemplates a significantly different and dynamic approach to attorney regulation. Under a PMBR model, lawyers in private practice must establish mechanisms and protocols to avoid the filing of disciplinary grievances and malpractice claims. Essentially, lawyers must adopt a common sense business model to avoid practice problems.
Lawyer regulators throughout the country are monitoring the practice of PMBR in Australia and England to determine the answer to a basic question: Can PMBR be successfully adopted here?
Speaker Bio
For more than 35 years, Jim has investigated and prosecuted hundreds of charges of lawyer misconduct and has argued dozens of disciplinary cases in the Supreme Court of Illinois. He also served as president of the National Organization of Bar Counsel (NOBC), the bar association of lawyer regulators.
A speaker on ethics and professional responsibility issues, Jim has appeared in countless programs throughout Illinois and nationally. He has played a significant role in developing the rules of conduct that govern Illinois lawyers and is regularly consulted on professional responsibility issues by lawyers both within and outside the field.
Over the course of nearly 30 years, Jim has taught legal ethics, first at the DePaul University College of Law and then at the Loyola University of Chicago School of Law, where he is currently an adjunct professor. He has presented hundreds of speeches, lectures, and workshops on professional responsibility and lawyer regulation topics to law firms, bar associations, corporations, and judicial and governmental groups and agencies.