Home News Center

Contact: Brandon J. Vogel
Department of Media Services & Public Affairs
bvogel@nysba.org
518/487-5535

January 30, 2008

STATE BAR ETHICS COMMITTEE HONORS GEORGE WASHINGTON LAW SCHOOL PROFESSOR THOMAS D. MORGAN

The New York State Bar Association today announced that Thomas D. Morgan of George  Washington  University  Law  Schoolhas been awarded the 2008 Sanford D. Levy Memorial Award, sponsored by the Committee on Professional Ethics, for outstanding lifetime contributions to published scholarship in the field of legal ethics.  Morgan will be honored at the State Bar’s Annual Meeting at 12:30 p.m. today. 

“Professor Morgan is a highly distinguished scholar of legal ethics and we are proud to honor his contributions in advancing the scholarship in the field,” said Committee Chair Joseph E. Neuhaus of New York City(Sullivan & Cromwell LLP).  “He has written wisely and incisively on a wide variety of ethical topics over a period of some thirty years.”

The Levy Award was established in 1981 by a bequest of a former Chair of the Committee on Professional Ethics.  The Committee presents it annually to an individual or institution that, in the opinion of the Committee, has significantly contributed to an understanding of professional ethics by the publication of an article, commentary or series of articles or commentaries on the subject.

Morgan is the Oppenheim Professor of Antitrust and Trade Regulation Law at George  Washington  University  Law  School, where he has taught since 1989.  His areas of expertise include: lawyer ethics, legal ethics, judicial ethics, government ethics, economic regulation and antitrust law.  He is a frequent lecturer and consultant on professional ethics and lawyer malpractice. He has co-authored several casebooks and written many articles on antitrust law and professional ethics.

Morgan received his undergraduate degree from Northwestern  Universityand earned his law degree from the University of Chicago Law School.  Before his current position at George Washington, he was dean of the Emory University School of Law and a professor at the University  of Illinois  and Brigham  Young  University.  He also has served as a visiting professor at Cornell and a visiting scholar at Oxford.  Morgan was selected by the American Law Institute as one of three professors to prepare its new Restatement of the Law Governing Lawyers: The Law Governing Lawyers.  In 1990, he was president of the Association of American Law Schools.

Previous recipients of the Levy Award include Roger C. Cramton of Ithaca (Cornell Law School), the New York Professional Responsibility Report, Lawrence J. Fox of Philadelphia (University of Pennsylvania Law School), Jonathan J. Lerner of New York (Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP), Russell C. Pearce of New York (Fordham University School of Law), Fordham Law Review, and HofstraLaw School Journal of the Institute of Legal Ethics.

The 74,000 member New York State Bar Association is the official statewide organization of lawyers in New Yorkand the largest voluntary state bar association in the nation.  For more than 130 years since it was founded in 1876, the NYSBA has continuously served the public and the bar and improved the justice system.                       

                                                            ###