Buchalter Welcomes New Professional Responsibility Group Chair in Portland

Buchalter is pleased to announce David Elkanich joins the Firm as Chair of the newly launched Professional Responsibility Practice Group. He is a welcome addition to the Firm’s expanding Portland office, and also a member of the Litigation Practice Group.

Elkanich focuses his practice primarily on legal ethics, risk management, and discipline defense. He advises lawyers, law firms, in-house legal departments, as well as students and other professionals, on a variety of ethics issues, including conflicts of interest, confidentiality and privilege, fee disputes, internal investigations, law firm dissolutions and partnership disputes, unauthorized practice of law and admissions issues, malpractice and professional liability cases, and litigation issues, such as withdrawal and disqualification motions.

Among his achievements, he was Chair of the Anti-Bias Rule Drafting Committee in Oregon, which drafted an anti-bias ethics rule that was ultimately adopted as Oregon Rule of Professional Conduct 8.4(a)(7), making it professional misconduct for a lawyer to, “in the course of representing a client, knowingly intimidate or harass a person because of that person’s race, color, national origin, religion, age, sex, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status or disability.” He also spent three terms on the Oregon Legal Ethics Committee and is an adjunct professor at Lewis & Clark Law School, where he has taught ethics since 2012.

Among his many accolades, Elkanich was named as one of The Best Lawyers in America, Ethics and Professional Responsibility Law from 2016-2021, and was selected as the Ethics and Professional Responsibility Law Lawyer of the Year in 2021. He was featured in Oregon Super Lawyers magazine from 2017-2020, and as a “Rising Star” in 2012 and 2013.