Rosenstein to give keynote address at ABA’s annual meeting

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who has frequently been in the spotlight because of his role overseeing Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian election meddling, will take center stage later this week at the American Bar Association’s annual meeting in Chicago.

Rosenstein will be a special guest speaker on the first afternoon at the gathering of thousands of lawyers that will run Thursday through Aug. 7 and also feature sessions on a variety of hot-button issues, such as sexual harassment in the workplace.

ABA President Hilarie Bass said meeting attendees are excited to hear from someone as prominent as Rosenstein about how to conduct oneself when handling high-profile and politically sensitive matters.

“I think they will be very interested to hear what he will have to say about the rule of law and how one maintains it in a hyper-political environment,” Bass said in a phone interview Friday. “Most lawyers think he has done a very commendable job trying to walk a tightrope at a time when, sadly, everybody in our institutions that for most of our history have been revered are instead being criticized on a daily basis.”

Rosenstein will speak a week after some U.S. House Republicans took the initial step to try to impeach him for alleged stonewalling of their document requests related to the Russia investigation. The lawmakers have backed off for now after resistance from Republican leadership in the House.

Diane Karpman, a Los Angeles ethics lawyer who is a member of the ABA’s House of Delegates and will be in Chicago for the ABA meeting, said she was thrilled about the opportunity to hear Rosenstein speak.

“To me, he is a hero and extraordinarily brave,” Karpman said. “I think he is one of the few people speaking justice to power. He is trying to keep everyone consistent with the values of our country.”

Earlier on Thursday afternoon, Bass will moderate a panel focused on the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements that have shined a spotlight on the prevalence of sexual harassment.

Judge M. Margaret McKeown of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will be one of the panelists. McKeown was appointed to serve on the Federal Judiciary Workplace Conduct Working Group recommended by U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., and she chaired a similar 9th Circuit ad-hoc committee.

Other panelists will include Tina Tchen, founder of the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund, Microsoft Deputy General Counsel Teresa Hutson and Nicole VanderDoes, chief counsel for the ABA Standing Committee on the American Judicial System.

“I think it is going to be a great group of different perspectives,” Bass said.

“Law firms across the country are grappling with how do we make sure to create an environment that is not just diverse, but makes people feel that they are included,” she continued. “Eliminating harassment and bullying is certainly one of the top priorities to create that environment.”

When the ABA’s House of Delegates meets early next week, some revisions to the accreditation standards for law schools will be up for debate.

The highest profile change would be eliminating the mandate that ABA schools ensure applicants have taken a “valid and reliable admissions test.”

Most law schools require applicants to take the LSAT in order to comply, but recently a couple dozen schools have started permitting the submission of Graduate Record Examination scores. The University of Pennsylvania Law School announced in June it will allow applicants to begin applying this fall with GMAT, GRE or LSAT scores.

Law school officials who support eliminating the admissions test standard say doing so would permit schools to attract and choose from a broader pool of applicants.

The ABA’s legal education council has proposed as an alternative to the test requirement that a school whose admissions policy and practices were called into question would presumptively be out of compliance with the accreditation standards if it did not require a valid and reliable admissions test.

Karpman of Los Angeles said she will vote in favor of the change.

“The idea of a predicate admissions test is unnecessary and excessive,” Karpman said. “Those tests don’t test drive, motivation and values. You can’t test someone’s reaction to injustice.”