Kirsten H. Spira

Los Angeles

Legal Malpractice Defense, Employment Litigation

Spira’s work on behalf of lawyers and law firms has several sides. First, as a co-chair of her firm’s professional responsibility practice, she regularly defends attorneys and their firms against accusations of malpractice. As a member also of Jenner’s employment practice group, she represents law firms facing claims of wrongful termination, discrimination and harassment from lawyers.

And this year, Spira took over as the chair of the Los Angeles County Bar Association’s Professional Responsibility and Ethics Committee. That panel publishes written opinions on difficult issues of lawyer duties and responsibilities, and it comments on proposed new professional conduct rules and legislation affecting lawyers.

The committee has been especially busy lately, she said. Its big task was commenting on the September report from the State Bar’s California Paraprofessional Program Working Group, which endorsed allowing nonlawyers to provide limited legal services to consumers in specified areas.

Spira said her ethics committee determined it should do more than simply oppose or support the idea. Instead, “we looked at the paraprofessional rules of conduct proposed by the [working group], and we commented on all of those rules — which rules made sense, which ones didn’t, and why we thought they didn’t,” she said.

The county bar panel also produced a detailed opinion on the dicey issue of an attorney representing multiple parties whose interests may conflict. Generally, that’s allowed if the clients each give informed written consent. “However, there are exceptions to the rule, and the opinion analyzes those exceptions,” Spira said. “It’s actually a very helpful, nitty-gritty opinion.”

The work she does with the county bar committee doesn’t often overlap with her work for her own clients. “But it is important work, and I find it really rewarding,” she said.

Increasingly, those clients include law firms ensnared in litigation over Ponzi schemes. She and partner Michael McNamara represent one of the firms caught up in the $1.3 billion collapse of the Woodbridge Group of Companies.

Because of her employment law expertise, she also helps firms sued by their own lawyers. One example would be a lawyer claiming to have been excluded from working on a matter for discriminatory reasons.

Those kinds of cases can be very difficult to litigate without revealing client confidences. Spira said she has worked on some cases that raise those issues. “If the nuts and bolts of the case require you to give up client information, the case probably can’t be litigated,” she said. But she added, “A lot of times, these sticky questions get resolved short of litigation.”

On top of her law firm and bar work, Spira frequently takes on pro bono matters. She handles dozens of foster child adoptions each year through the Alliance for Children’s Rights. And last year, she and a Jenner team helped win an important appellate ruling about child custody and domestic violence restraining orders.

-- Don Debenedictis