Andrew Oringer, chairman of the Committee on Attorney Professionalism and a partner at Dechert

In January, the New York courts system adopted a new version of the Standards of Civility for the state's legal professionals. The New York State Bar Association's Committee on Attorney Professionalism spent nearly four years examining the standards to create the first official revision since 1997.

In contrast to the state's Rules of Professional Conduct, which set out requirements for attorney behavior and provide discipline and sanctions for violations, the Standards of Civility "set forth principles of behavior to which the bar, the bench and court employees should aspire."

Andrew Oringer, chairman of the Committee on Attorney Professionalism and a partner at Dechert, answered a few questions about the newly revised Standards of Civility. He said current and former NYSBA leaders were extremely helpful during the revision process, as were current and former top judicial officials.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length. ____

Q: What do you think are the most important changes that practitioners should be aware of?

A: If you take a step back, any changes that involve a readoption of the standards are good, if for no other reason than to bring the standards back into the discourse and to get people talking about civility and remembering how much civility matters. Talking about civility can't be a bad thing.

In terms of the specifics, I think the most important change in there is to expand them and to have them be expressly applicable outside of the litigation context, so that all lawyers are reminded that civility is important whether or not the lawyers spend their time in a courtroom. And while that may or may not be obvious, it is certainly nice, I think, to have all lawyers reminded about the fact that they should be civil in all their dealings, whether or not they're courtroom lawyers [or] transactional lawyers, trust and estates lawyers, tax lawyers, whatever it is.

[The standards] were never limited to just the litigation setting, but because they grew up in a litigation context, the standards were really pitched in that direction. And so what we did is we expressly expanded them to be applicable outside of the litigation setting, and then we put some color on that.

The other thing that's important, or at least relevant, was the modernization of the standards [to] sort of remind people that it's a slightly different world we live in right now, with email and the like.

Q: Can you talk about the meaning of "should aspire" and the weight that [the standards] carry and then what they don't carry?

A: So that's really important too, and we sort of struggled with this a bit, as to what the reach of the standards would be. And we ultimately settled on the reach that they always had, which is that they're aspirational standards, they're sort of best practices if you will.

The Rules of Professional Conduct basically set out rules that you must comply with, but we sort of refused to accept the fact that doing the required is necessarily enough. … We felt it was legitimate to encourage people to do more than is actually required and we took the view that professionalism does sort of call out for doing more than you have to do.

So I think these standards work with the Rules of Professional Conduct in that the Rules of Professional Conduct basically say if you don't comply with the Rules of Professional Conduct there's real trouble, whereas the civility standards basically say that if you don't toe the line on the civility standards, maybe you're not being all that you can be.

Q: To maybe illustrate that a bit, [there's a] recommendation that if another attorney is not abiding by the standards to maybe point that out to them. And I wondered if you've encountered any success stories of that working, or any stories about that in practice.

A: I think that, to be honest, the significance of the standards is that they're out there, and the significance of the standards is that they're being read and understood, but I would not pretend, at least in my view, I would not pretend to think or assume that attorneys are poring over the specific dictates of the rules as they would when trying to figure out whether or not someone is in compliance with the Rules of Professional Conduct.

I do think that it's possible that if an attorney is faced with a clearly uncivil adversary, if you will, or a judge is faced with a clearly uncivil lawyer or whatever the context may be, I do think that at that point it might be possible that someone would open up the rules and cite to them and call out the misbehaving attorney's behavior.

And there certainly are examples where judges and the like have cited the standards, so that is out there. But I don't believe it's like you would expect it to be with the Rules of Professional Conduct, where someone says 'Hmm, am I allowed to do this?' and then all of a sudden the books get opened and the research gets done.

Although I do know that there definitely are examples on the books and in disciplinary hearings where judges have cited to specific standards that are there. I do not have chapter and verse of that, but I do know that that has happened.

Q: [With] this being the first official revision in 23 years, [is] there a push to do that more often?

A: That has not been discussed. I would like to think that we will not let them get this stale again, but I would also be surprised if this were done with any kind of regularity. You would like to think that standards of civility are at least a bit timeless.

We are going through technological changes now that really did call for some modernization. I don't necessarily see a specific horizon for this being re-upped again, but I would like to think that the amount of time it takes for people to look at these again will be shorter than the one that we just went through.

Q: What else do you think is important for people to know?

A: I think it would be interesting for people to understand how difficult this process was, and how people have very strongly held views as to both what the standards should say and what their scope should be, in terms of how much they're aspirational [as] opposed to required.

These were all very, very intense and difficult discussions, and people should know that these revisions were not done lightly. That the resulting final revisions really didn't look like the initial drafts. That people had a lot to say and had strongly held beliefs as to what they should say.

And what I personally felt was that it was absolutely critical to find a way to consensus, to bring people together so that the resulting revisions would be revisions that everybody could be proud of and that people could support. And we ultimately got this done with nobody objecting at the level of the Committee on Attorney Professionalism and with no real objections that I can recall at the state bar level.

I think that the standards are strong, and that they're standards that the New York bar, and I don't mean the New York State Bar Association [but] the New York bar, can be proud of.

I also think this is a nice statement by lawyers that lawyers can maybe lead instead of follow when it comes to reminding people about the importance of civility. I think that that's a good thing, it puts lawyers in a good light and I think that lawyers should be proud of that.

With a slight bit of parochialism, I also think that it's nice that New York, which has a significant role nationally because of both the fact that it's a commercial center, the fact that it's got a very active bar and a very active bar association, I think that it's nice that within the context that lawyers are leading, it's also nice speaking as a New York lawyer that New York lawyers are leading.