The Impaired Lawyer: Reporting Duties, Client Protection, and the Return to Practice

Tracy L. Kepler, Risk Control Director | CNA’s Lawyers Insurance Program

Tracy L. Kepler has spent more than two decades in attorney regulation, discipline, and client protection. From 2000 to 2014, she served as Senior Litigation Counsel for the Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission (ARDC), where she investigated and prosecuted cases of attorney misconduct. She later directed the American Bar Association’s Center for Professional Responsibility, providing national leadership in legal and judicial ethics, professional regulation, professionalism, client protection, professional liability, and attorney well-being. She is now a Risk Control Director for CNA’s Lawyers Insurance Program, where she designs and develops risk control initiatives relevant to the practice of law.

• Education & Credentials

Ms. Kepler is a graduate of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and received her law degree from New England School of Law in Boston, Massachusetts.

• Recognition & Leadership

Ms. Kepler served as Director of the American Bar Association’s Center for Professional Responsibility, a role of national leadership in developing and interpreting standards and scholarly resources in legal and judicial ethics, professional regulation, professionalism, client protection, professional liability, and attorney well-being. She has served on the Board of the National Organization of Bar Counsel (NOBC), including as its President, an organization of legal professionals whose members enforce the ethics rules that regulate lawyers’ professional conduct. She sits on the board of the Institute for Well-Being in Law, formerly the National Task Force on Lawyer Well-Being, and is an author of its Well-Being Report. She is also an Advisory Board Member of the Mindfulness in Law Society.

• Professional Involvement

Ms. Kepler has served on the ABA’s Commission on Lawyers Assistance Programs as a Commission member, a member of its Advisory Committee, Chair of its Education and Senior Lawyer Committees, and a member of its National Conference Planning Committee. She is an Adjunct Professor teaching Legal Ethics at American University’s Washington College of Law, Georgetown University Law Center, and Loyola School of Law in Chicago. She lectures frequently at CNA-sponsored events, state and local bar associations, and national seminars, and writes articles on law firm risk control and professional responsibility issues.

• Experience

Ms. Kepler’s career centers on what happens when a lawyer’s conduct or capacity comes before a regulator. As Senior Litigation Counsel for the Illinois ARDC from 2000 to 2014, she investigated and prosecuted attorney misconduct cases. From 2014 to 2016, she served as an Associate Solicitor in the Office of General Counsel for the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office, concentrating her practice in the investigation, prosecution, and appeal of patent and trademark practitioner disciplinary matters before the Agency, U.S. District Courts, and the Federal Circuit, while providing policy advice on ethics and discipline matters to senior management and drafting and revising Agency regulations. In her current role at CNA, she develops and distributes risk control content for lawyers.

Laurie J. Besden, Executive Director | Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers of Pennsylvania, Inc.

Laurie J. Besden is the Executive Director of Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers of Pennsylvania, Inc. (LCL PA), the state’s lawyer assistance program. From 2011 to 2015, as LCL PA’s Deputy Executive Director, she oversaw its Helpline operations, served as the primary contact for intervention requests, expanded its law school outreach, and increased its presence within the organized bench and bar. Since becoming Executive Director in 2015, she has continued in most of these capacities while assuming responsibility for the organization’s administrative and financial operations and its judges’ assistance program, Judges Concerned for Judges.

• Education & Credentials

Ms. Besden received her B.A. in Criminology and Criminal Justice from the University of Maryland, College Park (1995) and her J.D. from The Dickinson School of Law of the Pennsylvania State University (1999). She is a licensed attorney in Pennsylvania (1999) and New Jersey (1999).

• Recognition & Leadership

Ms. Besden received the Montgomery Bar Association’s Henry Stuckert Miller Award in 2015 for her dedication to public service in the legal profession, and Caron’s Legal Professional/Uniformed Public Service Award for the Greater Philadelphia Region in 2019. Her personal story has been filmed by the Pennsylvania Bar Institute in “Don’t Give Up Five Minutes Before the Miracle” and by the American Bar Association, in conjunction with the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law, in “The Besden Redemption,” and has appeared in the New York Times, MSNBC, American Bar Association publications, The Philadelphia Lawyer, The Pennsylvania Lawyer Magazine, and law.com.

• Professional Involvement

Ms. Besden has presented for the JAG Corps in Germany and Europe, Harvard Law School, American University Washington College of Law, the Pennsylvania Bar Association, the Pennsylvania Conference of State Trial Judges, Duane Morris LLP, the Commission on Lawyer Assistance Programs, and lawyer assistance programs in New Jersey, New Hampshire, Virginia, West Virginia, Texas, Missouri, Massachusetts, New York, and Rhode Island, among many other legal arenas. She has been a guest on several podcasts, including the American Bar Association’s “Voices of Recovery,” “BE CONVINCED: Sharing Stories of Hope,” Lawline’s “Leading with Redemption,” and “The Clip-Out.”

• Experience

Ms. Besden’s daily work is the operation of a lawyer assistance program: helpline intake, intervention coordination, confidential peer assistance for lawyers, judges, law students, and their families, and education across the bench and bar. Before joining LCL PA, she practiced law from 1999 through 2001 and from 2009 to 2011 as an attorney-at-law in a general civil and criminal practice in East Norriton, Pennsylvania, as a Law Clerk at the Pennsylvania Superior Court in Philadelphia, and as a Law Clerk at the Philadelphia Municipal Court.

SESSION 1 – Recognizing Impairment in Colleagues and Working with Lawyer Assistance Programs | 12:00pm – 1:00pm

This session equips attorneys to identify the warning signs of substance use disorders, mental health impairment, and cognitive decline in colleagues, and to understand when recognition triggers ethical obligations under Model Rules 1.1, 5.1, and 8.3. Attendees will learn how Lawyer Assistance Programs operate, what confidentiality protections apply, and how to use LAP referrals without inadvertently triggering—or waiving—reporting duties. By the end of this session, attorneys will be able to distinguish between general workplace observation and LAP-protected information, navigate state-specific rule variations, and take appropriate protective action for clients when a colleague’s impairment affects competent representation.

BREAK | 1:00pm – 1:10pm

SESSION 2 – Reporting, Client Protection, and Return to Practice After Lawyer Impairment | 1:10pm – 2:10pm

This session examines the ethical obligations attorneys face when a colleague’s impairment crosses into reportable misconduct, the mechanisms available to protect clients when a lawyer cannot continue to practice, and the legal framework governing reinstatement after impairment-related discipline. Attorneys will analyze Model Rule 8.3 reporting duties, mandatory withdrawal under Rule 1.16(a)(2), disability inactive status, court-appointed trusteeship, and the reinstatement standards under ABA Model Rule 25. Attendees will leave with a concrete understanding of when and how to act, how to avoid common compliance mistakes, and what a returning lawyer must demonstrate to be reinstated.