Successfully Crossing the State Line: Ethical issues When Your Practice Becomes Multijurisdictional

ERIC COOPERSTEIN started his private law practice devoted to legal ethics in the fall of 2006. He has represented hundreds of lawyers and law firms in ethics and law-practice related matters. Eric is a former Senior Assistant Director of the Office of Lawyers Professional Responsibility, where he worked from 1995 to 2001, and a former member of the 4th District Ethics Committee, on which he served from 2003 through April 2007.

Eric grew up in and around New York City and attended Hamilton College, where he graduated magna cum laude in 1985. Eric left New York to attend the University of Minnesota Law School, from which he graduated cum laude in 1990.

Eric has been fortunate to have had a series of great legal jobs. For the first 18 months after law school, he worked both as an associate at the Minneapolis law firm of Mansfield & Tanick and as a staff attorney at the Legal Aid Society of Minneapolis. Eric continued full time at Legal Aid for over three more years before moving on to the Office of Lawyers Professional Responsiblity (OLPR) in 1995. At OLPR, Eric investigated and prosecuted allegations of attorneys’ violations of the Rules of Professional Conduct, provided hundreds of advisory opinions to Minnesota lawyers, supervised the Trust Account Overdraft Notification Program, wrote articles for Minnesota Lawyer, and presented numerous seminars on ethics issues.

In 2001, Eric joined the Office of the court-appointed Monitor of the black farmers’ class-action settlement regarding race discrimination in USDA farm loan programs. Over the next seven years, Eric played a substantial role in helping the Office issue over 5,700 decisions for class members and the government. The black farmers’ case (Pigford v. Schaffer) is widely recognized as the largest class action civil rights settlement by the government in U.S. history, with over one billion dollars paid to class members.

Eric is also an active volunteer in his community. He serves as a Trustee of First Universalist Church and previously served for six years on the First Universalist Foundation board, four of those as chair. In recent years, Eric has also volunteered for Habitat for Humanity and Emerge. Eric was a “graduate” of the first year of the Hennepin County Bar Association’s LINC program — Lawyers Impacting the Nonprofit Community — a six-month series of seminars designed to train lawyers to serve nonprofit organizations.

Mary McDermott is a Senior Lead Counsel at the ABA's Center for Professional Responsibility.