Michael Downey

Michael Downey is a legal ethics lawyer and founder of the Downey Law Group LLC, a law firm devoted to legal ethics, law firm risk management, and the law of lawyering. Michael regularly represents lawyers, their clients, judges, and other professionals in high stakes and complex civil litigation and disciplinary proceedings. Michael also serves as outside general counsel to numerous law firms. He has also provided expert testimony on legal ethics and law practice matters in Missouri, Kansas, and the District of Columbia. In addition to his law practice, Mike teaches legal ethics and law firm practice at Washington University School of Law and professional responsibility at St. Louis University School of Law. He has presented on legal ethics and law practice more than 200 times in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. Author of the book Introduction to Law Firm Practice (2010), Mike has published more than 60 articles on legal ethics and law practice. Mike has also been a guest on NPR’s Talk of the Nation and has been interviewed more than 100 times on legal ethics and law practice by major news and professional publications including the New York Times, National Law Journal, Wall Street Journal, and ABA Journal. Michael served as Chair of the ABA Law Practice Division and on the ABA Task Force on the Future of Legal Education. He writes the “Ethox and Paradox” ethics columns for the Litigation magazine, as well as an ethics column for the St. Louis Lawyer. His past bar experience includes serving on the ABA Ethics 20/20 Commission’s Technology Working Group and chairing the Ethics & Technology Committee of the ABA Center for Professional Responsibility, the Illinois State Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Professional Conduct, and the Bar Association of Metropolitan St. Louis’s Professionalism and Ethics Committee. Mike graduated first in his class from Washington University School of Law and clerked for the Hon. Pasco M. Bowman, then serving as Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. He also holds a graduate certificate in Law Firm Management at George Washington University.