糖心原创

UC Law SF Faculty Member to Receive CLA鈥檚 Professional Responsibility Award

UC Law SF Emeritus Lecturer Richard Zitrin is set to receive the 鈥檚 2019 Harry B. Sondheim Professional Responsibility Award for his contributions to the field of legal ethics. Zitrin is only the fourth lawyer to receive the award.

Established in 2010, the award recognizes an attorney鈥檚 鈥渙utstanding long-term contribution to the advancement of attorney professional standards in California.鈥 Such contributions may include, for example, exemplary practice, teaching, service in the state, scholarship, promoting diversity, and legislative advocacy.

Portrait of Richard Zitrin, an emeritus lecturer at UC Law SF, smiling in a professional setting with a gray blazer and pink shirt.

Zitrin.

鈥淲e are fortunate to count Richard Zitrin as a member of our community,鈥 said Academic Dean and Professor Morris Ratner, who is also an ethics scholar. 鈥淭he Harry B. Sondheim Award recognizes Professor Zitrin鈥檚 remarkable contributions to the law governing lawyers and to our profession.”

Zitrin has taught Legal Ethics since 1977, and at UC Law SF since 1994. He has authored three books and dozens of articles in the field, including, for many years, a bimonthly column, 鈥淭he Moral Compass,鈥 for American Law Media. He also founded the University of San Francisco鈥檚 Center for Applied Legal Ethics, serving as its first director. In 2000, the ethics curriculum he developed at USF was given an ABA Presidential Award from the ABA Section on Legal Education.

Additionally, Zitrin has chaired the California State Bar鈥檚 ethics committee; and was awarded the ABA鈥檚 Pro Bono Publico Award in 2006. While teaching, he continually remained in private practice, trying 50 cases to verdict. And, he became a California-certified specialist in legal malpractice law in 2010.

This year, Zitrin retired from teaching, but he will remain affiliated with UC Law SF as an emeritus lecturer, continuing to produce scholarship, mentor students, and be engaged on important ethics questions.

Zitrin will receive the award during the next statewide ethics symposium in April 2020, a symposium he founded in 1995 while State Bar ethics committee chair.