Myles V. Lynk is the recipient of the 2025 Michael Franck Professional Responsibility Award. Professor Lynk is an Emeritus Professor of Law at Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, where he specializes in professional responsibility, having also taught civil procedure and business organizations. In 2024, he also was appointed Dean of ASU’s Emeritus College.
Professor Lynk is nationally recognized as a leader in legal ethics and professional responsibility through his work as a lawyer, law professor, disciplinary counsel, and tireless contributor to the ABA. His leadership within the ABA, his academic contributions as a legal scholar and mentor to law students and young lawyers, and his dedication to improving the legal profession have left an indelible mark on the legal community.
Throughout his long and distinguished career Professor Lynk has committed himself to counseling, teaching, and enforcing the Rules of Professional Conduct and the ethical responsibilities of lawyers. Immediately after law school Professor Lynk clerked for Judge Damon J. Keith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. He later served as a Special Assistant to U.S. Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare Joseph A. Califano, Jr., as an Assistant Director on President Carter’s White House Domestic Policy Staff, and as an Assistant Special Counsel for the U.S. House of Representative’s Committee on Standards of Official Conduct. While a law firm partner in private practice in Washington, DC, prior to his transition to academia, he served on the D.C. Bar Legal Ethics Committee, chaired the D.C. Bar Clients’ Security Trust Fund, and served on the D.C. Bar’s Board of Governors, all before serving as the D.C. Bar’s President from 1996-1997.
In 2000, Professor Lynk made his transition to academia, establishing himself as an influential scholar in legal ethics and a devoted mentor for countless law students and others in his field. He began his academic career as the first Peter Kiewit Foundation Professor of Law and the Legal Profession at ASU, holding that role for 20 years. In 2005, he was tasked with leading the university’s investigation into the shooting death of one student by another student. This resulted in “The Lynk Report,” which recommended measures that were adopted by the university to protect the safety of students, faculty and staff. In 2014, Professor Lynk was a Visiting Fellow at Magdalene College, University of Cambridge, and a Visitor in the University’s Faculty of Law. He studied the differences between the regulation of lawyers in the UK and the US, including the use of Alternative Business Structures in the UK, and between the “cab rank rule” for barristers in the UK and declining a representation pursuant to Model Rule 1.16(a) by lawyers in the US. In 2015, Professor Lynk was a Scholar in Resident at ASU’s Center for the Study of Race and Democracy and in 2016-17 he was a Senior Fellow in ASU’s Lincoln Center for Applied Ethics. He has worked to update the rules of professional conduct of the Navajo Nation Bar Association, and in 2018, lectured on legal ethics to Navy and Marine Corps JAG officers at the Naval Justice School. Also in 2018, Professor Lynk helped organize and lectured at the National Attorneys General Association’s Annual Ethics Summit, which was held at the ASU College of Law. This was the first time this national conference was held at a law school. In 2017 and 2018, Professor Lynk served pro bono as the consultant on legal ethics to the District of Columbia Office of Attorney General.
In Arizona, in addition to his academic work at ASU, Professor Lynk co-chaired the State Bar of Arizona’s Task Force on Multijurisdictional Practice, lectured on ethics and leadership to the State Bar’s Bar Leadership Institute, and in 2024 was appointed by the Chief Justice of the Arizona Supreme Court to that Court’s Task Force on Alternative Business Structures.
After being awarded emeritus status at ASU in 2019, Professor Lynk returned to the District of Columbia to serve through 2022 as the Senior Assistant Disciplinary Counsel in charge of appellate litigation in the D.C. Office of Disciplinary Counsel, where he represented the Office in numerous cases before the D.C. Board on Professional Responsibility and the D.C. Court of Appeals. Even then, Professor Lynk found the time to nurture his passion as a legal educator, teaching courses in professional responsibility at Georgetown University Law Center and Howard University School of Law, and lecturing pro bono on legal ethics and professional responsibility to a wide range of audiences.
Professor Lynk resumed full-time teaching in 2023 with visiting professorships at the University of South Carolina Joseph F. Rice School of Law and the Michigan State University College of Law, before returning to the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law in 2024. While at the University of South Carolina, Professor Lynk organized and delivered the keynote address at the South Carolina Law Review’s symposium, “Through the Looking Glass: The Future of Legal Ethics and Lawyer Regulation in the United States.” While at Michigan State University, he delivered a distinguished public lecture series on the legal and ethical issues surrounding the use of racial and ethnic imagery in sports and advertising in the United States.
In addition to his extensive work in academia and legal practice Professor Lynk has served in numerous leadership capacities within the ABA, including serving in the House of Delegates, as Chair of the Section of Civil Rights and Social Justice, and as Chair of the Standing Committee on Professional Discipline from 2010-2013 and Chair of the Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility (SCEPR) from 2014-2017. Several colleagues cited his work as SCEPR chair in developing and ushering in the adoption of Model Rule 8.4(g), which prohibits discrimination and sexual harassment in conduct related to the practice of law, as a demonstration of his unparalleled leadership and service to the legal profession, with one former ABA colleague calling it “the most significant change to the ABA Model Rules in the past twenty years.” More recently, Professor Lynk was instrumental in proposing the change to the ABA Model Rule for Registration of In-House Counsel which was adopted by the House of Delegates, to remove a troubling ambiguity between that Rule and Model Rule of Professional Conduct 5.5. In all, through his work in private practice, academia, government service, and service to the ABA, Professor Lynk has committed his talents to serving the profession and others, and has gained a reputation as a member of the legal profession who takes seriously his duties “as a representative of clients, an officer of the legal system, and a public citizen having a special responsibility for the administration of justice.”
Please join us in congratulating Myles Lynk as the 2025 winner of the Michael Franck Professional Responsibility Award. Professor Lynk will be presented with the ABA Michael Franck Professional Responsibility Award on May 30, 2025, during the 2024 ABA National Conference on Professional Responsibility at The Ritz-Carlton, Pentagon City in Arlington, Virginia.