April 22, 2025

ASU Law’s Myles Lynk honored with ABA’s top ethics award

Myles Lynk, dean of the ASU Emeritus College and a professor emeritus in the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University, has been named the 2025 recipient of the American Bar Association’s Michael Franck Professional Responsibility Award. This is the ABA’s highest honor for outstanding contributions to legal ethics and professional responsibility.

 

Lynk is the 32nd all-time recipient of this award. It will be presented on Thursday, May 29, at the ABA National Conference on Professional Responsibility in Arlington, Virginia.

 

“I am deeply honored and humbled to be in the distinguished company of the prior recipients of the ABA’s Michael Franck Professional Responsibility Award,” Lynk said. “I hope that my work as both a lawyer and a law professor has helped others recognize, now more than ever, the responsibility lawyers have to both protect and promote due process, ethical lawyering and the rule of law in our democracy.”       

 

Lynk has served as a lawyer, law professor, disciplinary counsel and longtime contributor to the ABA. His leadership and scholarship have influenced generations of law students, young lawyers and the broader legal profession.

 

After graduating from law school, Lynk clerked for Judge Damon J. Keith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit. He later served as a special assistant to the U.S. Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare Joseph A. Califano, Jr.; as an assistant director on President Jimmy Carter’s White House domestic policy staff and as an assistant special counsel for an investigation by the U.S. House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct.

 

While in private practice in Washington, D.C., he held several leadership roles within the District of Columbia Bar, including as chair of the Clients’ Security Trust Fund, as a member of the Legal Ethics Committee and as D.C. Bar President from 1996 to 1997.

 

Lynk joined ASU Law in 2000 and has since made a lasting impact. He has taught professional responsibility to a generation of law students; worked on revising the Navajo Nation Bar Association’s professional conduct rules; hosted the 2018 Ethics Summit of the National Association of Attorneys General; co-chaired a State Bar of Arizona task force on multijurisdictional practice, delivered lectures on legal ethics at the Naval Justice School in Newport, Rhode Island and contributed to the State Bar of Arizona’s Bar Leadership Institute. 

 

Lynk was awarded emeritus status at ASU in 2019, and from 2019 through 2022, he served in Washington, DC, as the senior assistant disciplinary counsel for appellate litigation in the D.C. Office of Disciplinary Counsel. After visiting professorships in 2023 at the University of South Carolina and Michigan State University, Lynk returned to ASU Law in 2024 to teach courses in professional responsibility. In that same year, he was appointed by the chief justice of Arizona to the Arizona Supreme Court’s Task Force on Alternative Business Structures.

 

“I was honored to nominate Professor Lynk for the Michael Franck award,” said Ann Ching, ASU Law clinical professor of law. “This award recognizes Professor Lynk’s dedication to ensuring the legal profession adheres to the highest ethical and professional standards. Moreover, it highlights his selfless service as a teacher, role model and mentor to countless students and lawyers throughout his career.”

 

Lynk has held several leadership roles within the ABA, including chairing the Standing Committee on Professional Discipline and the Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility. During his term as chair of SCEPR the ABA adopted Model Rule of Professional Conduct 8.4(g), which adds discrimination and sexual harassment as professional misconduct when engaged in during the practice of law. Most recently, he played a key role in revising the ABA Model Rule for Registration of In-House Counsel to resolve a long-standing ambiguity with Model Rule of Professional Conduct 5.5.

 

Lynk’s lifelong commitment to ethical lawyering, public service and mentorship embodies the very principles the Michael Franck Award honors.

Written by Crystal Jimenez