Total Credits: 1 CLE, 1 Ethics
Come learn about recent changes to the ethics rules impacting state attorneys general, county attorneys, municipal attorneys and other lawyers that regularly advise and represent government organizations.
Chair:
Christine Davis, Office of the Attorney General
Speakers:
Professor Ann Ching, Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law, Arizona State University
Peter Lantka, US Department of Justice
Regina Nassen, Tucson City Attorney's Office
Patricia A. Sallen, Ethics at Law PLLC
Professor Keith Swisher, University of Arizona College of Law
is Ethics Counsel for the State Bar of Arizona, where she advises lawyers via the Ethics Hotline, presents ethics-related CLEs, is legal advisor to the Fee Arbitration Program, serves on the Ethics Advisory Group, and acts as liaison to the Arizona Supreme Court's Attorney Ethics Advisory Committee. Previously, she worked for the Maricopa County Attorney's Office, prosecuting family violence and sex crimes cases, and was Adjunct Faculty in the Administration of Justice program at Phoenix College. Additionally, Christine was in private practice for several years, with litigation experience in state and federal court. Christine received her BA from Linfield College in McMinnville, OR and her JD from Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law. She is a member of the Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers and the American Bar Association Center for Professional Responsibility.
Ann Ching is a Clinical Professor of Law at Arizona State University Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law. Prior to this appointment, Professor Ching served as Ethics Counsel for the State Bar of Arizona (2016-2019) and Assistant Professor of Law at Pepperdine University (2013-2015). Professor Ching began her legal career in the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps (2001-2012), where she achieved the rank of Major and was awarded the Bronze Star Medal for her service in Iraq.
Outside of teaching, Professor Ching serves on the Arizona Supreme Court Ethics Advisory Committee, the State Bar of Arizona Ethics Advisory Group, and as a judge pro tempore for the East Valley Regional Veterans Court. Professor Ching is also Immediate Past President of the Arizona Asian American Bar Association.
Professor Ching is a graduate of the University of Arizona (B.A.), the University of North Carolina (J.D.), the Judge Advocate General’s School of the Army (LL.M.), and Pepperdine University (M.B.A.).
Patricia Sallen is a lawyer in private practice focusing on professional responsibility issues. 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 law-related topics. She regularly presents at CLE seminars and publishes articles about professional responsibility and writes the Eye on Ethics column for Arizona Attorney. She also has 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. She currently serves on the State Bar's Ethics Advisory Group and the Supreme Court's Task Force on Ethics Rules Governing the State Attorney General, County Attorneys, and Other Public Lawyers.
Keith Swisher is Professor of Legal Ethics and Director of the Bachelor of Law and Master of Legal Studies Programs at the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law. Prof. Swisher teaches legal ethics and procedure, serves as ethics counsel and expert witness to lawyers, law firms, and judges, and represents indigent defendants in the Ninth Circuit. His scholarship is regularly published and cited in the areas of legal and judicial ethics and disqualification, and he previously founded and edited the first blogs on judicial ethics and lawyer disqualification. He is a former member of the ABA's Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility and the Editorial Board of ABA/BNA Lawyers' Manual on Professional Conduct. In 2011, he received the ABA's Rosner & Rosner Young Lawyer Professionalism Award, and in 2016, he received the AJC's Learned Hand Emerging Leadership Award.
Previously, Prof. Swisher clerked for the Ninth Circuit (Canby, J.) and practiced at Osborn Maledon in Phoenix.
