It was so embarrassing that almost all of our alleged news organizations don’t want to publicize the debacle, though EA reader and occasional commenter James Flood, a lawyer who does have integrity, flagged the exchange in his comment to this post. Over at Memeorandum, which I officially regret ever endorsing on EA and hereby retract said endorsement, there is no mention of the ABA’s public disgrace as I type this at 10:08 EST. The New York Times, of “All the News That’s Fit to Print” fame, has no mention of it in today’s paper or on its website. Neither does the Washington Post, in the city with more lawyers per square foot than anywhere else in America , and that proclaims “Democracy Dies in Darkness.”
NPR? Nope. CNN? Nah. MSNBC? You have to be joking….
As you can see from the above clips (the rest of her disgraceful testimony can be tracked down I’m sure, but those examples are sufficient) Behnke gives Congress the equivalent of a Fifth Amendment plea. (It is evidence of unethical conduct for a lawyer to plead the Fifth Amendment.) Lawyers were partly responsible for the horrible performance of Claudine Gay, briefly Harvard’s DEI president and her counterparts at MIT and the University of Pennsylvania in 2024, when they repeated a non-responsive mantra drafted by a single law firm when questioned regarding anti-Semitism on their campuses. Yet even though that offensive lack of candor and transparency led to two of the three being forced out of their positions, the ABA opted for the exact same strategy when it knew its leader was going to face a tough examination on the topic of DEI in law schools and elsewhere.
Behnke’s refusal to be direct, open and honest wasn’t just embarrassing, and it wasn’t just damning. It was also so, so stupid. Either Behnke allowed herself to become a walking, talking example of what results from DEI policies (she is, as you can see, a black woman), or she chose to demonstrate, in Congress, under oath, in a camera’s focus, exactly those traits antithetical to trust. She looked Rep. Gill right in the eyes and pretended that she was answering his questions when she was not. She was avoiding answering his questions; a child could see it. She refused to answer his questions. The reason was that honest answers would have made her organization look terrible, and made the conclusion that DEI policies are hypocritical, illogical, unethical and illegal unavoidable.
Guess what other organization has chosen to ignore yesterday’s “the emperor has no clothes” moment. The Association for Professional Responsibility Lawyers, an organization I pay dues to and that supposedly is dedicated to a mission that includes encouraging “the study, development, and implementation of sound ethical standards within the legal profession.” The membership is currently using its listserv to debate whether it is ethical to defend a corrupt prosecutor who is facing sanctions. A prominent representative of their profession just displayed the worst of the traits the public associates with lawyers and at the root of growing public distrust of a crucial public service that cannot function without public trust, and their level of concern?
I have taken too long to draft this post because I am nearly paralyzed with fury. I hesitate to raise this issue with the APRL membership because, as I have documented here several times, they are overwhelmingly left-biased, almost all ABA members, and so frequently have proven immune to challenges to their hide-bound biases that I have no hope of a reaction that will accomplish anything but making me more discouraged than I already am.
For later exposition: I am working with a group to establish a new organization called “The Ethical Lawyer’s Network.”
I just hope I’m not too late.
Ethics Alarms 
This reminds me of the people at the college I work at. They are like cartoon levels of absurdity.
In the midst of the filebustering we hear “I am a real estate attorney.” I regard RE attorneys as an entry level position in the profession. For the most part they provide boiler plate forms to be signed at the closure of a real estate purchase, while sitting at a big table. My question is how does she become president of the ABA?
She seems to be the very product of DEI policy this organization aspires to. Which mean promoting someone to a position of authority when they do not have any actual proven skills required. It means promtion based on color or ethnicity only, not substantial merit.
Retired real estate and real esdate finace attorney here. Ouch!
Commercial, though. In Arizona, title companies do the work residential real estate lawyers do in many states, such as title searches and issuing and selling title insurance policies and conducting closings for residential transactions.
Respectfully disagree. Minnesota bar has a certification for Real Property Specialist. I think it is an 8-hour test. As I recall, the test covers residential and commercial sales and leases, contracts for deed and cancellations, eminent domain, Land use regulations and zoning, environmental issues, mortgages and foreclosures, Torrens property, Title Examination, Common Interest Communities and Mechanic’s Liens.
Definitely not just filling out forms.
-Jut
Proponents of the ABA’s stance argue that encouraging representation and enforcing quotas are two fundamentally distinct concepts — one is about broadening the pipeline, while the other is about fixing the result. That argument has legs. If their model is the Detroit Symphony Orchestra model: auditions behind a partition, candidates selected by musicianship alone — then encouraging the widest community to be inspired to apply is a good upstream intervention. If the model is the “Dingel model,” then the DSO needs to hire X people of Y background, that is discrimination against individual applicants and also the consumer (the community as a whole) and the music itself. The ABA leader and the ABA as a whole I suppose is doing the latter while trying to hide behind the former. I don’t think either of the two “opponents” in the video were that effective. The ABA leader’s hedging and obfuscation came across to many (not me) as a reasonable response to a bully. This is not the way to win the optics war in my view. I’m not sure if it’s winnable — I’m wading in pessimism up to my knees at this point. Part of that pessimism is rooted in the Republicans I vote for…
She’s a lawyer. She is supposed to have the training to explain and defend complex concepts. “The ABA leader’s hedging and obfuscation came across to many (not me) as a reasonable response to a bully.” In court, a tough cross examination may seem like bullying, but the witness is still required to answer the question. Anyone who regarded that as anything but disgraceful obfuscation supports the discrimination she was unable to defend…that’s not an optics issue. That’s a blind bias issue. Chuck Schumer used the same tactic when he was asked if he endorsed Graham Platner.
If the Left thinks the exchange between ABA Dolt and the Congressman was such good optics, why is it being quarantined by the news media other than Fox?
Good question. The mainstream (liberal) news is biased in its content and its presentation. Why they’re not using that in their favor is curious, or maybe it’s not just newsworthy in general. You are my only source for that story, which is another reason why I appreciate this blog. Jack, I think you could have done a better job than that congressman in interrogating her true stance. I’m not defending her — but if I were a campaign manager for a conservative candidate, I don’t think I’d be able to use that televised exchange for any useful purpose. I’m not trying to be a contrarian for the sake of it — I don’t think he did his side much good. And I think she wiggled out of it without too much self damage. Time will tell I suppose.
Oh, you are certainly right. And the public doesn’t care much or pay much attention to the ABA, if they even know what it is. I would hope that lawyers would care, but that profession is so politicized and corrupt today that even that may be a pipe dream.
Where’s that wood-chipper?
Repeating a non-responsive answer ad infinitum can get a person held in contempt in a trial court or even a deposition.
A concert pianist in our midst?
No! Just remembering nonsense by Dingel — I think it was — that the DSO was not “representative” and suggested racism. The DSO responded that all auditions are blind — only the music is evaluated. Dingel didn’t budge. That was a long time ago and I got it third hand — before I had internet! So details may be off…
I posted on it at the time.
Rookie lawyers don’t need to interview for jobs behind a screen. They have their resumes and transcripts.
A concert pianist in our midst?
Jack,
I am with you. I stopped my membership in the ABA during the Clinton presidency debacle.
Here’s an unsolicited suggestion regarding a name for your new organization: I am a trademark lawyer so I am inclined to suggest the name be something a little less descriptive, and perhaps a little more memorable and distinctive. Using your first two terms, Ethical Lawyers, I have been trying to brainstorm a clever name that would make a useful acronym, for convenient shorthand in distinguishing it from the ABA. With just a few minutes reflection, the e l words that you started with led me to think of ELBOW. Among other things, that could be short for Ethical Lawyers and Barristers Of the World? Clever marketers could come up with concepts and slogans about elbowing the ABA to the side or even out of existence.
I feel confident that you or other people might come up with additional and better and more clever names, but regardless of the name, I support your effort.
Mark Holland 949-228-6750
Evasiveness during direct questioning—especially from legal leadership—always damages professional credibility far faster than making a clear, honest defense. Regardless of where anyone stands on bar policies, transparent communication should be the baseline expected of any legal representative. On a separate note regarding online research and reading dense legal threads like this on desktop, using the best ad blocker extension helps eliminate visual distractions and tracking scripts while navigating heavy comment sections. Great analysis on the ethical standards surrounding congressional testimony!
Tangential issue but if you really want the best ad blocker, you should switch to Firefox and use uBlockOrigin (which Chrome banned because it’s too effective). Brave is still good, I think, but (unlike Firefox) it’s Chromium based and will always have a Sword of Damocles hanging over it.
That looked really, really bad for a lawyer. If she’d been smart enough to have her lawyer next to her, perhaps such counsel could have helped her come up with some other answers and she might not have embarrassed herself so completely. Not a good look for the University of Wisconsin.
“Not a good look for the University of Wisconsin.”
This Class of ’79 alumnus (GO BADGERS!!!) begs your indulgence…
PWS