Total Credits: 1 CLE, 1 Ethics
Come learn about recent changes to the ethics rules impacting federal government lawyers, state attorneys general, county attorneys, and municipal attorneys.
Chair:
Christine Davis, Office of the Arizona 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
If you are a government lawyer, contact the State Bar of Arizona's CLE Department at registrations@staff.azbar.org or 602-340-7231 to receive a coupon code for this seminar.
Cancellations or registration transfers for in-person registration must be submitted at least 7 days prior to the seminar. Refunds will not be issued for cancellations less than 7 days prior to the seminar.
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.
Regina Nassen has been a Principal Assistant City Attorney in the Tucson City Attorney’s Office since August 2021 after almost 18 years as a Deputy County Attorney in the Civil Division of the Pima County Attorney’s Office (“PCAO”). While at PCAO Regina also served as the Supervising Attorney of the Civil Division’s Business & Transactions Unit and as PCAO’s Chief Ethics Counsel. Prior to becoming a government lawyer, she was in private practice as an Associate with Snell & Wilmer from 1993 to 2000.
Regina recently received the State Bar of Arizona’s 2024 Member of the Year Award. She is currently a member of the Arizona Commission on Judicial Conduct and previously served on the Arizona Supreme Court’s Ethics Advisory Committee, 2019 through 2023. She is a member of the ABA’s Center for Professional Responsibility CLE Committee, a fellow of the American Bar Foundation, and a member of the governing council of the ABA’s Government & Public Sector Lawyers Division. She is also a past Chair of the State Bar of Arizona’s Public Lawyers Section and the recipient of the Section’s 2015 Distinguished Public Lawyer Award.
Regina graduated summa cum laude from the University of Arizona College of Law in 1992, after which she clerked for Justice Frederick Martone on the Arizona Supreme Court before entering private practice. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of Northern Iowa in 1986, summa cum laude, with a double major in Philosophy and Anthropology.
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.).
Christine Davis serves as Ethics Counsel at the Arizona Attorney General’s Office, where she also handles criminal appeals. Previously, Christine has worked as a prosecutor for the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office, Ethics Counsel for the State Bar of Arizona, and in private practice, with litigation experience in state and federal court. Christine received her BA from Linfield University in McMinnville, OR and her JD from Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law. She is a member of the State Bar of Arizona’s Ethics Advisory Group and the Association of Professional Responsibility 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.
Peter Lantka serves as an Attorney Advisor for the Professional Responsibility Advisory Office of the U.S. Department of Justice where he provides professional responsibility advice and training to Department and Assistant United States Attorneys throughout the country. Prior to joining PRAO, Peter served in the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona for seventeen years in various positions including the Professional Responsibility Officer, Sanctions Officer, Electronic Discovery Office Coordinator, Civil Division Deputy Chief, and Civil Chief.
Mr. Lantka has served as an instructor at the Department of Justice’s National Advocacy Center, where he has taught classes on professional responsibility, trial advocacy, deposition skills, e-discovery, and law enforcement tort liability. He has also taught classes on behalf of the Department of Interior’s Tribal Officer Special Law Enforcement Certificate Program, presented e-Discovery training to federal agencies and through the Office of Legal Education, and taught Federal Jurisdiction at the Arizona Summit School of Law. Prior to joining the Department of Justice, Peter served as an associate attorney with the law firm of Hoeppner Wagner and Evans LLP in Valparaiso, Indiana. He is a former law clerk to the Honorable Christopher A. Nuechterlein, Magistrate Judge for the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Indiana; research assistant with the American Judicature Society; a 2002 graduate, magna cum laude, of the Valparaiso University School of Law; and a 1999 graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is a certified mediator with for the Justice Department’s Office of Dispute Resolution and has mediated multiple employment cases throughout the country. Mr. Lantka is appearing in his personal capacity.
