Welcome to the webpage for the American Bar Association Standing Committee on Professional Discipline. I am Paula J. Frederick, the current Chair of the Committee.

The Discipline Committee is the entity in the ABA responsible for “developing, promoting, coordinating, and strengthening professional disciplinary and regulatory programs and procedures throughout the nation, including developing and promoting ABA activities relating to professional discipline, model rules for disciplinary enforcement and standards for the imposition of sanctions.”

While the Discipline Committee and the ABA have no regulatory authority over lawyers or judges, the Committee does offer many resources to help the profession and the public learn about lawyer and judicial discipline and related professional regulatory matters. For example, for the public we have an online Directory of State Disciplinary Agencies and our Survey on Lawyer Discipline Systems. The Discipline Committee is the only entity that provides consultation services regarding lawyer and judicial discipline systems to the state and territorial supreme courts that are responsible for regulating the legal profession and the judiciary. These courts may adopt rules based upon the Discipline Committee’s models and may implement the recommendations contained in the Committee’s consultation reports. In these ways, the Committee’s work directly enables the courts and their disciplinary agencies to effectively regulate the over 1,300,000 lawyers and thousands of judges in the U.S. and its territories to the benefit of the public and the profession. Also, because the practice of law is now more global than ever, the Committee’s work encompasses international lawyer regulatory issues. You can view the ABA policies developed by the Committee and its other regulatory resources from the navigation bars to the right of this message.

The Committee is responsible for maintaining the ABA National Lawyer Regulatory Data Bank, the only repository of public lawyer regulatory actions in the U.S. For decades, the courts and lawyer disciplinary agencies have relied and continue to depend upon the Data Bank to make sure that reciprocal disciplinary enforcement occurs effectively and efficiently. Through the Data Bank, the Discipline Committee partners with state, territorial and federal courts to ensure that lawyers disbarred or suspended in one jurisdiction cannot open an office in another jurisdiction and cause harm to clients, to the public or to the justice system. The Data Bank is also used by bar admissions authorities to aid in the screening process for the increasing number of lawyers already licensed in one jurisdiction who are seeking full admission in another.

The Committee sponsors many educational programs for lawyers and is particularly proud of the programming that it has developed to help solo and small firm practitioners, minority and young lawyers as they work to succeed in challenging economic times.

The Committee welcomes any suggestions you may have to enhance its services.

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