HEATHER L. ROSING

Heather L. Rosing is the CEO and president of Klinedinst PC, where she has worked for almost 27 years. An authority on legal ethics, she chairs the firm’s ethics and risk management department along with the complex litigation and professional liability department.

She is currently the chair of the ABA Standing Committee on Lawyers’ Professional Liability. Its upcoming National Legal Malpractice Conference will be held in April in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Like most in her field, she’s reluctant to discuss client matters. “I have several super-exciting cases I can’t talk about,” she said.

In one that concluded with a win last year, Rosing obtained dismissal of claims by an attorney against the law firm that represented the attorney’s litigation foe. Part of the claims focused on a missed arbitration fee payment date. The judge agreed with Rosing’s argument that the litigation privilege precluded the suit and awarded fees to her client. Mogan v. Sacks, Ricketts & Case LLP et al., 3:21-cv-08431 (N.D. Cal., filed Oct. 29, 2021).

“This was a third-party claim against lawyers,” Rosing said, “and cases like this have just exploded. However, they are highly amenable to anti-SLAPP motions, and that’s what we did. We don’t believe most plaintiffs in these cases have standing to sue.”

Rosing spoke a day after Thomas V. Girardi was indicted on federal wire fraud charges. He pleaded not guilty to allegations he stole more than $18 million from clients from 2010 to 2020. The prominent Los Angeles attorney’s downfall shook the State Bar, where officials had ignored warning signs for years and which hastened to enact fresh protections to better shield clients from unethical lawyers.

“This was a huge earthquake for the profession,” said Rosing, who promoted and formed the California Lawyers Association ethics committee. “The Girardi scandals were the catalyst for dramatic changes.” Chief among them is the new Client Trust Fund Protection Program and ethics rules changes.

Rosing has been teaching, speaking and writing about the changes to ready clients for what she calls a “brave new world for lawyers” who will now undergo trust account audits and be required to distribute funds owed to clients within 45 days.

“This is going to have a huge impact on consumer firms and family law firms and those that hold a lot of money,” Rosing said. “Lawyers are taking this seriously now, as we seek to re-enforce the integrity of the profession.”

She added that only eight or nine states currently audit lawyer trust funds. “Now California joins them,” she said. “I proposed this step years ago. It gained no traction then, but now the need for reform is evident.”

– John Roemer