Biography

Monroe Freedman has received the American Bar Association’s highest award for professionalism, in recognition of “a lifetime of original and influential scholarship in the field of lawyers’ ethics.” Professor Ronald Rotunda has written, “If we had to pick the one person who first created modern legal ethics as a serious academic specialty, it would be Monroe Freedman.”

Described in the Harvard Law Bulletin as “a lawyers’ lawyer,” and by the New York Times as “a pioneer in the field of legal ethics,” Professor Freedman is frequently consulted by law firms throughout the country. He is the former dean of Hofstra Law School, and for the past 30 years has lectured annually on lawyers’ ethics at Harvard Law School. During 2007-2009 he is also a Visiting Professor at Georgetown Law School.

Professor Freedman’s first ethics treatise, Lawyers’ Ethics in an Adversary System (1975), received the ABA’s Gavel Award Certificate of Merit. Reviews have called it “brilliant,” a “classic,” and one of the few “monumental contributions to legal education in the past generation.” His most recent book is Understanding Lawyers’ Ethics (3rd ed., Matthew Bender, 2004) (with Abbe Smith). Writings by Professor Freedman are required reading at most law schools in the United States, and have been published in China, Japan, Canada, Great Britain, Poland, and India.

Professor Freedman was recognized by The Washingtonian as “one of [the District of Columbia’s] most highly regarded constitutional lawyers.” His clients have included William Kunstler, Roy Cohn, Alan Dershowitz, and several members of Congress. He was also chosen by Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel to be the first executive director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, and has received a Martin Luther King Award, for “decades of work to advance human dignity and social justice.”

He received his A.B., LL.B., and LL.M. at Harvard University, and is listed in Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in American Law, and Who’s Who in the World.

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