I have gradually discovered, over the past few months, that the association of legal ethics lawyers in which I am a card-carrying member is, in fact, biased, partisan, and not particularly ethical at all.

Membership in the group is considered a credential and an important one, especially since few legal ethics experts have degrees in the field. (My mentor in the area, Michael Daigneault, is one of the few who do.) I don’t belong to the association because of the credential—membership in the ABA ethics section is regarded as a credential too, and that association is crippled by bias, so to hell with it—but because it once seemed like a useful network and because the listserv keeps me relatively informed of major developments in the field.

I knew the group was overwhelmingly left-biased because the whole legal profession is left-biased. Conservative members generally foxhole during discussions that turn political, and they often do. When I have decided to be Popeye (“It’s all I can stand, ‘cuz I can’t stand no more!”) and point out a particularly annoying outbreak, I receive sheepish emails off site from members who tell me that they agree with me. They just don’t have the guts to say so on the site.

Last month, as I have mentioned here, I raised for discussion the difficult problem of how to square the legal profession’s protection of its many (MANY) alcoholic and substance-addicted lawyers with the duties of candor and communication to clients, supposedly a core legal ethics requirement. The group’s reaction was to “circle the wagons,” deny the problem, and attack me. When I responded in words I believed were appropriate to the attacks, I was singled out and threatened by the group’s president, who said that he had received complaints about my “incivility.”

Translation: Non-conforming positions that made some members uncomfortable are not welcome. Shut up, Jack.

I haven’t participated since. I had already been disillusioned twice in the previous weeks, once when the consensus was that ethics lawyer somehow get an exception from the legal ethics duty to report lawyers they know are unfit to practice ( it would take too much time, you see) and that the fact that bar associations, contrary to the public’s belief, not only do a terrible job policing the profession but intentionally make it difficult for the public to flag unethical lawyers. “How dare you!” would be my summary of the group’s reaction to my pointing out that fact.

Today I saw a post on the listserv by an esteemed member whose signature contained this as a feature:

“A Prince, whose Character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the Ruler of a free People.” —-Declaration of Independence

So now I have to put up with partisan, No Kings, Trump Deranged virtue signaling. I am sorely tempted to drop a note with the coda, “These people are crazy.” —President Donald J. Trump, 2026 State of the Union Message.

I’m sure I would again be the target of censorship, and maybe, finally, banned. On one hand, I still find the listserv a valuable resource. On the other hand, as Captain Hook would say, they are hypocrites and unethical., and somebody ought to tell them.

Now what?