Legal Ethics & Professional Responsibility Practice

The Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility practice group counsels, consults, advises, and educates lawyers on matters involving professional ethics and responsibility and related issues. These services range from interpretations of the Rules of Professional Conduct to the defense of lawyers who are the subject of disciplinary action by regulatory authorities and the courts, to providing expert testimony where lawyer professionalism and practice are at issue.

The areas in which this group can provide expert help to other lawyers include not only issues arising under the Rules of Professional Conduct, but related issues of client confidentiality, attorney work-product doctrine, attorney-client privilege, actions to dis­qualify lawyers, and law firms, and attorney-fee disputes.

This group defends lawyers who are named in complaints filed with the Utah State Bar and in legal malpractice actions. Members of this group also represent clients who have serious legal malpractice claims against lawyers.

Finally, the group can provide preventative educational services such as training and seminars for law firms and corporate counsel in the areas of liability risk-management, internal investigations, various corporate-compliance matters, officer and director responsibilities, and conflicts of interest.

Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility Attorneys

Experience

Gary G. Sackett

  • Gary G. Sackett leads this Litigation Department group. He has been active in the field of legal ethics and professionalism for over 30 years, representing and consulting with lawyers on ethical, professionalism, and malpractice issues. He was a member of the Utah State Bar’s Ethics Advisory Opinion Committee from 1989-2007, serving as the committee’s chair for 12 years. He currently serves on the Utah Supreme Court’s Advisory Committee on the Rules of Professional Conduct, having been first appointed in 1994. Mr. Sackett has served as an adjunct professor of law at the University of Utah, teaching legal ethics and professional conduct, and as a visiting professor of law at the Catholic University of Lublin, Poland. He also chairs the Jones Waldo internal ethics committee.

Craig R. Mariger

  • Craig R. Mariger is a former chair of the Utah Ethics Advisory Opinion Committee, having served the committee for 15 years. He is a senior litigator with Jones Waldo who has extensive experience in handling matters involving claims of attorney ethics and professionalism. He previously chaired the firm’s internal ethics committee for many years.