Conflicts for Government Attorneys

Patricia A Sallen Related Seminars and Products

Patricia A. Sallen (480-290-4841; psallen@ethicsatlaw.com) is a lawyer in private practice focusing on professional responsibility. She represents lawyers in discipline and admission matters, provides ethics advice to lawyers, serves as an expert witness on professional-responsibility issues, and consults on a myriad of other ethics-related topics. She regularly presents at CLE seminars and publishes articles about professional responsibility and writes the Eye on Ethics column for Arizona Attorney magazine. She taught professional responsibility as an adjunct professor at the Arizona State University Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law for more than a decade. In addition to practicing in private law firms, she spent more than 15 years working for the State Bar of Arizona as both a bar counsel and ethics counsel and supervised programs such as the Fee Arbitration Program and Client Protection Fund. She served as expert consultant to the Arizona Supreme Court's 2014-15 comprehensive ethical rules review effort and to the Court’s 2019-20 Task Force on the Delivery of Legal Services, which resulted in the groundbreaking rule changes allowing non-lawyer firm ownership and legal paraprofessionals and also served the Supreme Court’s Task Force on Ethics Rules Governing the State Attorney General, County Attorneys, and Other Public Lawyers. She current serves on the State Bar’s Ethics Advisory Group and the city of Phoenix Ethics Commission, which oversees the investigation and enforcement of the gift policy and conflicts of interest related to elected Phoenix officials and board and commission members.

Doreen Nanibaa McPaul Related Seminars and Products

Doreen Nanibaa McPaul is an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation. She is Kinyaa'áanii, born for Bilagáana, her maternal grandfathers are Honaghaahnii, and her paternal grandfathers are Irish. She was born and raised in Chinle, Arizona on the Navajo Reservation. She is a 1995 graduate of Princeton University and earned her Juris Doctorate in 2001 from the Arizona State University College of Law, where she also received a Certificate in Federal Indian Law and served as a staff writer for the ASU Law Journal. After law school, Ms. McPaul clerked at the Arizona Court of Appeals for the Honorable Jefferson L. Lankford (retired). She has diverse experience serving as a tribal court staff attorney, as an associate attorney at the Nordhaus Law Firm in Albuquerque, and as a visiting clinical law professor and Interim Director of the Indian Legal Clinic at ASU. Since 2008, Ms. McPaul has worked as an in-house tribal attorney for several Arizona tribes, including a 4-year appointment as the Navajo Nation Attorney General. Ms. McPaul has nearly 25 years of experience practicing Indian law, and is admitted to practice law in Arizona and New Mexico, as well as before several tribal and federal courts.

Ms. McPaul is a 2013 graduate of the State Bar’s Bar Leadership Institute and remains active in the State Bar and Indian legal community. She currently serves as the President-Elect of the State Bar of Arizona after becoming one of the first American Indians appointed to serve on the State Bar’s Board of Governors in 2018. The Supreme Court of Arizona re-appointed her to the Board in 2019 and again in 2020 and 2023. Ms. McPaul is also a founding board member and current Executive Director of the Tribal In-House Counsel Association, a national organization that provides informational networking and support measures and programming to in-house tribal attorneys and federal Indian law practitioners. She also serves on the Board to the American Indian Law Center and serves on the PLSI Judicial Clerkship Committee. Finally, Ms. McPaul serves as a Trustee for the Irish Cultural Center in Arizona.

Ms. McPaul has received several honors for her work. In 2021, she received the Presidential Distinguished Service Award for the Irish Abroad from Ireland’s President Michael D. Higgins at a ceremony at the Áras an Uachtaráin in Dublin. She was also elected to membership in The American Law Institute in 2021. Ms. McPaul received the 2020 Alumnus of the Year Award from the National Native American Law Student Association in recognition of her work, passion, dedication to serving Indian Country, and empowering native law students to dedicate their careers to serve their tribal communities. She is also the recipient of the State Bar of Arizona Indian Law Section’s 2020 Rodney B. Lewis Award of Excellence for exemplifying the honesty, integrity, courage, grace, dignity and respect of the award’s namesake. And finally, Ms. McPaul received the 2020 Cushing Academy Leadership Award for outstanding leadership, commitment to public service, and invaluable contributions to the Navajo Nation and the legal profession.

Most importantly, Ms. McPaul is a proud military spouse and mom. She is married to SFC Mark McPaul (retired) and they have three sons, two Rez dogs, and a cat.

Virjinya Ruth Adair Torrez Related Seminars and Products

Pascua Yaqui Tribe

is an Assistant Attorney General for the Pascua Yaqui Tribe, a federally recognized Indian tribe located in Arizona. Virjinya earned both her J.D. and her M.A. in American Indian Studies at the University of Arizona, and she earned her B.A. in Political Science (specializing in International Relations) and East Asian Studies at the University of Iowa, with certificates in International Business and American Indian and Native Studies. She is admitted to practice in both the federal and state courts of Arizona, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the Tohono O’odham Judicial Court, and the Pascua Yaqui Tribal Court. She is also an accredited Veteran Affairs attorney. Virjinya started her legal career as an associate at Vingelli & Errico, a small general practice firm in Tucson, Arizona; was a solo practitioner for a brief period of time; and served five years as an Assistant Attorney General for the Tohono O’odham Nation. Virjinya is a 2016 graduate of the State Bar of Arizona's Bar Leadership Institute; is the Immediate Past Chair of the Executive Council for the State Bar of Arizona’s Indian Law Section; serves as the appointed State Bar of Arizona’s representative on the Arizona State, Tribal & Federal Court Forum; and is a member of NABA-AZ, the Arizona Minority Bar Association, and the Tribal In-House Counsel Association. She is also active in the community and serves on TUSD’s Native American Education Advisory Committee, the Community Foundation for Southern Arizona’s Community Investment Team, the Community Foundation for Southern Arizona’s Governance Committee, and the Community Foundation for Southern Arizona’s Board of Directors. Virjinya's work for the Tribe is varied, but she primarily represents the Tribe’s Public Safety, Human Resources, Education, and Facilities Management Departments and programs. Virjinya is Cherokee/Seminole/Muscogee Creek, and is an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. 10/18

Harrison William Rice Related Seminars and Products