Carole is an AV Peer Review Rated sole practitioner admitted to the California State Bar in 1984. She holds a BA from the University of California at Berkeley (1980) and a JD from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco (1984).
She is available for consulting and legal advice in the field of legal ethics and issues involving professional responsibility, and the law of lawyering. Carole’s background combines real world law practice experience with an in-depth knowledge of ethics. From her experience as a partner in private law firms (Berger, Kahn et al., and Pettis, Tester, et al.), Carole appreciates how ethics issues arise in a private practice. With her background as a litigator handling business, real estate, and employment matters from the inception of her practice with Rutan & Tucker, Carole takes a practical, realistic approach to common ethics dilemmas arising in connection with litigation. Her experience working as in-house counsel at Amplicon, Inc. and California First National Bank Corp., a publicly traded company, provides her with insight into commonsense approaches to ethics issues faced by corporate counsel. As a former federal prosecutor, she is also intimately familiar with ethical issues encountered in the criminal arena.
Carole has extensive experience with ethics on the state and local levels. On the state level, Carole has been a member of the California State Bar’s Committee on Professionalism and Conduct since 2005. She served as COPRAC chair in 2009-2010, and currently is the Special Advisor to the Committee. COPRAC authors State Bar ethics opinions, and ethics alerts and provides continuing legal education to the members of the bar.
Carole has also spoken and written extensively on a wide variety of ethics related topics. Through COPRAC, the OCBA, PLI, and other organizations, Carole has spoken at the State Bar’s Annual Ethics Symposiums, State Bar Annual Meetings, OCBA programs, and in other venues, on a wide variety of ethics related topics, including attorneys’ fees, client trust accounting, conflicts of interest, confidentiality issues, screening, judicial recusal, lawyer advertising, collaborative law, prosecutorial misconduct, ethical issues arising from lawyer impairment, and many others. Carole has also participated as a panelist on the annual update on ethics-related cases. Also on behalf of COPRAC, Carole has closely monitored the work of the Commission on the Revision of the Rules of Professional Conduct, which is re-writing California’s Rules of Professional Conduct, and has written articles and spoken regarding the Commission’s proposals.
Carole has taught the core professional responsibility at Western State University College of Law since 2003. The course covers the broad scope of legal ethics issues, including the duty of confidentiality, attorney client privilege, conflicts of interest, advertising regulation, legal fees and client trust accounting, legal malpractice, discipline, judicial ethics, and other important ethics issues. She has also taught a class at Western called Legal Ethics and Business Representation, which addresses ethical issues for corporate and transactional lawyers, including conflicts of interest and confidentiality, the lawyer as director, ethical issues in corporate internal investigations, related party transactions and the corporate opportunity doctrine, lawyers taking equity interests, and other important issues. Currently, Carole is the Dean of Abraham Lincoln University, School of Law in Los Angeles, California, where she has taught Contemporary Ethical Issues, covering judicial ethics, prosecutorial misconduct, client trust accounting, conflicts of interest and screening, and other issues.
On the local level, Carole is a member of the Orange County Bar Association, and is past chair of the OCBA’s Professionalism and Ethics Committee. She has served as a contributing editor of the Ethically Speaking column in the OC Lawyer Magazine for over five years, and has authored numerous articles on a variety of topics, including attorneys’ fees, judicial recusal, the attorney client privilege, sex with clients, temporary or contract lawyering, screening, the self-defense privilege, impaired lawyers, and other ethics related topics.
Carole is also a member of the Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers (APRL), and a member of the Los Angeles County Bar Association’s Professional Responsibility and Ethics Committee (PREC).
Publications
Carole’s publications in the field of legal ethics, professional responsibility, and the law of lawyering include the following articles. Please contact Carole for updated information, as the law does change constantly.
Ethics Update 2010 – Significant Developments in the Law of Lawyering – California State Bar Annual Meeting (September 2010)
Ethical Paradigms for 2010 – California State Bar Annual Meeting (September 2010)
Modification of Lawyer-Client Fee Agreements, 52 Orange County Law. 38 ( May 2010)
Finance and Friendship: Judicial Bias May Violate Due Process, 52 Orange County Law. – (April 2010)
High Courts Address Attorney Client Privilege, 52 Orange County Law. 40 (February 2010)
Ethical Issues Arising During Depositions – Chapter in PLI Course Materials on Taking and Defending Depositions – PLI – San Francisco, California – June 2009
Ethics Opinions Provide Guidance in Resolving Attorneys Fees Issues – 51 Orange County Law. 44 (February 2009)
Addressing the Intricacies of Future Conflict Waivers – 50 Orange County Law. (November 2008)
Is Screening on the Horizon in California? 50 Orange County Law. 44 (August 2008) – Co-authored with Robert K. Sall
Malpractice Insurance Disclosure Lurches Toward Approval, 50 Orange County Law. 50 (April 2008)
Point/Counterpoint: Sex with Clients: Permission or Prohibition? 50 Orange County Law. 38 (February 2008) – Co-authored with Robert K. Sall
Ethical Considerations in Collaborative Family Law, 49 Orange County Lawyer 50 (November 2007)
Truth in Lawyer Advertising: Are Super Lawyers the Best Lawyers? 49 Orange County Law. 46 (April 2007)
Corporate Transactional Lawyers as “Gatekeepers,” 49 Orange County Law. 45 (March 2007)
Ethical Issues Arising From Lawyer Impairment, 49 Orange County Law. 42 (January 2007)
Avoiding Common Client Complaints: A Dialog with the OCBA Client Relations Committee, 48 Orange County Law. 44 (December 2006)
The Self-Defense Exception to the Ethical Duty of Confidentiality, 48 July Orange County Law. 59 (2006) Co-authored with Robert K. Sall
The Ethics of Temporary Lawyering, 48 May Orange County Law. 56 (2006)
Presentations
Judicial Independence: Corporate Expenditures and State Judicial Elections - University of San Francisco Law Review Symposium (February 2011)
Ethics Issues for Corporate Counsel – Orange County Bar Association – Corporate Counsel Section – (November 2010)
Reforming California’s Treatment of Prisoners, Criminal Sentencing and Ethics: Have We Gone Too Far? What Does the Future Hold? – Western State University Law Review Association Symposium (October 2010).
Ethical Paradigms for 2010 – California State Bar Annual Meeting (September 2010)
Ethics Update 2010 – Significant Developments in the Law of Lawyering – California State Bar Annual Meeting (September 2010)
Modification of Lawyer-Client Fee Agreements, 52 Orange County Law. 38 ( May 2010)
Ethical Paradigms for 2009: Navigating Ethics and Thriving – 2009 Institute on Entertainment Law and Business, University of Southern California, Gould School of Law – Los Angeles, California, October 2009
Annual Ethics Update, Panelist – California State Bar Annual Meeting – San Diego, California – September, 2009
Ethical Issues Arising During Depositions – Panelist – PLI – San Francisco, California – June 2009
Re-Forming the Rules of Professional Conduct – Moderator – California State Bar – Annual Ethics Symposium – San Diego, April 2009
Keeping Trust Accounts in Order & Responding to Fee Disputes – Presentation to Orange County Chapter Association of Legal Administrators – Costa Mesa, California – January 2009
Recent Developments in Legal Ethics – Panelist – California State Bar Annual Meeting – Monterey, September 2008
Prosecutorial Misconduct: Aberration or Epidemic, Panelist and Moderator – State Bar of California, Annual Ethics Symposium, San Francisco, May 2008
OCBA Last Dash – Preventing Substance Abuse - Costa Mesa, January 2008
OCBA Specialty Night – Ethical Strategies for Dealing with the Impaired Lawyer – Panelist -Costa Mesa, December 2007
Liability for Failure to Adequately Train, Los Angeles, June 2007
Ethics at the Edges of Family Law – Panelist – California State Bar Annual Ethics Symposium, May 2007
OCBA Specialty Night – Ethical Issues in Dealing with the Impaired Lawyer – Panelist -Costa Mesa, December 2006
OCBA MFA Luncheon Speaker –Ethics Update – Panelist – Costa Mesa, September 2006
Recent Developments in Legal Ethics – Panelist – California State Bar Annual Meeting – Monterey, August 2006
The Ethical Perils of Setting, Billing and Collecting Your Fees – Panelist – California State Bar Annual Meeting – August 2006
