The Criminalization of Politics: The Legacy of Watergate
NYU Student Chapter
Speakers:
- Geoff Shepard, Attorney
- Professor Stephen Gillers, NYU Law
Speakers:
- Geoff Shepard, Attorney
- Professor Stephen Gillers, NYU Law
NYU Student Chapter
Speakers:
Speakers:
Elihu Root Professor of Law, New York University School of Law
Stephen Gillers has been a professor of law at New York University School of Law since 1978 and Vice Dean from 1999-2004. He holds the Elihu Root chair. He does most of his research and writing on the regulation of the legal profession. His courses include Regulation of Lawyers, Evidence, and Law and Literature (with University Professor Catharine Stimpson, former dean of the graduate school).
Professor Gillers has written widely on legal and judicial ethics in law reviews and in the legal and popular press. He has taught legal ethics as a visitor at other law schools and has spoken on lawyer regulatory issues at hundreds of events in the U.S. and in Europe, Asia, and South America - often for legal ethics CLE credit - including at federal and state judicial conferences, law firms, corporate general counsel's offices, government law offices, ABA meetings, state and city bar meetings nationwide, in oral and written submissions to Congress, and in law school lectureships. For many years, four or five times each year, he has lectured on legal ethics at the New York City Bar Association CLEs.
Professor Gillers is the author of Regulation of Lawyers: Problems of Law and Ethics, a widely used law school casebook first published by Little, Brown (now Aspen) in 1985 with a 10th edition in 2015. With Roy Simon (and Andrew Perlman as of 2008 and Dana Remus as of 2016), he has edited Regulation of Lawyers: Statutes and Standards, published annually by Little, Brown, then Aspen, since 1989. He is also the author of Regulation of the Legal Profession (Aspen 2009)(the "Essentials" series).
From 2000-2002, Professor Gillers was a member of the ABA's Multijurisdictional Practice Commission which proposed rule changes (all of them accepted) to recognize the cross-border nature of legal practice. In 2009, Professor Gillers was selected to be a member of the ABA 20/20 Commission, 2010-2013, which studied the effects of technology and globalization on the regulation of lawyers leading to amendments to the Model Rules and recommended rule changes all of which were accepted. He was chair of the Policy Implementation Committee of the ABA's Center for Professional Responsibility (2004-2008) and was a member from 2002-2010. He was a member of the International Issues Committee of the ABA Section on Legal Education (2008-2009) and
In 2011, he received the Michael Franck Award from the ABA’s Center for Professional Responsibility. The Award is given annually for “significant contributions to the work of the organized bar….noteworthy scholarly contributions made in academic settings, [and] creative judicial or legislative initiatives undertaken to advance the professionalism of lawyers…are also given consideration.” The American Bar Foundation gave him the Outstanding Scholar Award in 2015.
Following a clerkship with Chief Judge Gus J. Solomon in Federal District Court in Portland, Oregon, Professor Gillers practiced law for nine years in various settings in New York City before joining the NYU Law School faculty. He is often quoted on issues of legal ethics in the legal and popular media.
Professor Gillers' latest scholarship is A Rule to Forbid Bias and Harassment in Law Practice: A Guide for State Courts Considering Model Rule 8.4(g), 30 Geo. J. Legal Ethics ____ (2017); Guns, Fruits, Drugs, and Documents: A Criminal Defense Lawyer's Responsibility for Real Evidence, 63 Stan. L. Rev. 813 (2011); A Profession, If You Can Keep It: How Information Technology and Fading Borders Are Reshaping the Law Marketplace and What We Should Do About It, 63 Hastings L. J. 953 (2012); How To Make Rules for Lawyers: The Professional Responsibility of the Legal Profession, 40 Pepperdine L. Rev. 365 (2013)(Symposium issue on The Lawyer of the Future); and Lowering the Bar: How Lawyer Discipline in New York Fails to Protect the Public, 17 J. Legis. & Public Policy 485 (2014).
Author of "The Nixon Conspiracy" (2021) and "The Real Watergate Scandal" (2015)
Geoff Shepard worked on President Nixon’s White House staff for five years, including serving as deputy counsel on his Watergate defense team. He testified as a government chain-of-custody witness in the Plumbers Trial and was subpoenaed for the same purpose in the Cover-up Trial. He possesses a “clearance letter” from the special prosecutor, stating he was never the object of an investigation by that office. Geoff has spent much of the past fifteen year researching and writing about the Watergate scandal. He has published three books, authored dozens of essays and made over fifty presentations challenging Watergate’s conventional narrative. Much of his work is based on recently uncovered internal files of the Watergate Special Prosecution Force, including their infamous “Road Map” that was the basis for the grand jury naming Nixon a cover-up co-conspirator and for the House Judiciary Committee urging his impeachment.