The Law of Lawyering

There was a moment early in Michael Downey’s career when he wasn’t sure if he was best suited for practicing law or teaching it. The classics major was working in civil litigation when he met with Dan Keating, then associate dean of WashU Law, to discuss which path to pursue.

“From that conversation, I started getting involved in legal ethics,” Downey says, “then started doing a lot of lawyer discipline-related activity and, really, things just kind of grew from there.”

Two decades later, Downey has carved a niche as both teacher and counselor of legal ethics. “I focus on the law of lawyering,” he says, “on what lawyers do, for good or for bad. How do you run a good practice? How do you help your clients? And how do you make sure that you can continue to make money and keep your license?”

It’s work that starts with the ABA’s Model Rules of Professional Conduct, which Downey uses to both advise firms about how to comply as well as mount a defense for lawyers accused of violations. “We do a little bit of legal malpractice, but we primarily do legal ethics, which is more preventative, as well as defending alleged violations,” he says of Downey Law Group, which also includes attorney Paige Tungate.

When a bar’s disciplinary counsel meets following a complaint, Downey helps lawyers respond to formal charges. He also helps at hearings and arguments before the state Supreme Court—of which he’s done about 20. 

For Downey’s advisory practice, he and Tungate serve as outside general counsel to about 100 firms. “I’ve got firms that send me their advertisements and solicitation letters and say, ‘Is this OK?’ I’ve got firms that call me and say, ‘We’ve got a problem client we need to get rid of. What should we do?’ or, ‘Somebody’s claimed we have a conflict,’” he says, noting that sometimes the topics intersect with broader social issues. “When people talk about things like mental health or substance abuse in the legal profession, I’m on the front lines.”

Outside of my workday, law firms are my hobby. … I read a lot of histories of firms—and enjoy them.

Downey did end up pursuing teaching—legal ethics and law firm practice—at WashU and Saint Louis University law schools as an adjunct professor. “People say, ‘They never teach you how to practice law at law school,’” he says. “Actually, that’s what I taught: how to develop clients, generate revenue, how people are paid, nuts-and-bolts issues like that.”

His teaching shifted in February 2020, when he and Tungate led a CLE webinar. To their surprise, hundreds of attorneys signed up. Now they present two free sessions per month, approved in Missouri and Kansas. “We had a program on Wednesday that had about 1,000 people attend,” Downey says.

While he isn’t sure how many attorneys he’s taught over the years, Downey says they have an email list with more than 14,000 addresses on it. And while most come from Missouri and Kansas, that’s far from comprehensive. “It’s sole practitioners in small towns you’ve never heard of to people at the biggest firms in the biggest cities to lawyers practicing internationally all over the world,” he says. “One time I referenced something involving whether or not Pluto was a planet, and someone responded, ‘I’m an attorney at NASA.’ They updated us on the status of Pluto, which was bizarre and hilarious.”

This year, topics included addressing disability discrimination in the legal system, artificial intelligence, judicial disqualification, and updates on legal ethics.

“Lawyers continue to get in trouble for the same types of things. The number one complaint is still failure to return phone calls. But there’s a lot of stuff we deal with today that wouldn’t have come up before: use of the internet, virtual practice, multistate practice—even things like the use of artificial intelligence and getting paid in cryptocurrency,” he says. “How we do things keeps changing, and lawyers are really clever about how they get in trouble, so there are some where I’m like, ‘I hadn’t thought of that.’”

The sessions are part service to the bar and part marketing for the firm, and the work requires constant attention. Some may call it a burden, but not Downey. “Outside of my workday, law firms are my hobby. I read nonfiction books about law firms, and I read a lot of histories of firms—and enjoy them. All that kind of influences what I do and what I work on.

“My standard joke is if lawyers ever stop doing stupid things, my job is in danger. But what are the chances of that?”

Downey Law Group’s free Missouri and Kansas ethics CLE webinars can be accessed at: 

downeylawgroup.com/free-missouri-and-kansas-ethics-cle-webinars/