At the annual meeting of the ABA House of Delegates this week, delegates ‘resoundingly adopted’ a resolution that makes it a breach of professional responsibility and ethical standards to discriminate or harass in the practice of law. The new rule is applicable to discrimination or harassment on a variety of grounds including race, sex, gender identity, disability, sexual orientation, marital status and age, among others. However, following considerable pushback to earlier drafts of the resolution, the new ABA policy will class discriminatory or harassing behaviour as professional misconduct only when the offending attorney ‘knows or should reasonable know’ that the behaviour in question is harassment or discrimination. Prior to the new resolution, discriminatory or harassing behaviour may have only counted as a professional violation if supported by a criminal conviction for the offending attorney.
Keeping with the times
While more conservative legal practitioners have criticised the new rule as a potential infringement upon attorneys’ rights to religious freedom and freedom of speech, others believe that a more robust framework for dealing with harassment and discrimination within the legal profession is long overdue. ‘It’s time for the ABA to catch up,’ said Myles Link, chair of the ABA ethics committee, during Monday’s resolution debate. NYU Law School legal ethics expert Stephen Gillers told the Wall Street Journal that ABA professional standards have long been lagging behind the evolving demographics of American lawyers: ‘Half of my student are women. A quarter are students of colour. The ABA has looked to them like an organisation of old white guys. This will vote will help,’ he said.
Sources: Wall Street Journal; ABA Journal
Email your news and story ideas to: [email protected]
