Michael S. McGinniss
Michael S. McGinniss
Assistant Professor of Law
michael.mcginniss@email.und.edu
Michael S. McGinniss is an Assistant Professor of Law at the University of North Dakota School of Law, where he teaches courses on Professional Responsibility, Evidence, Conflict of Laws, Advanced Legal Ethics, and Lawyering Skills. He earned a Bachelor of Arts in English (summa cum laude and first in his class) at Washington College. He received his legal education at the College of William & Mary, Marshall-Wythe School of Law, where he graduated third in his class and was inducted into the Order of the Coif. At William & Mary, Professor McGinniss was a member of the Board of Editors of the William & Mary Law Review and a Graduate Research Fellow. Upon graduation from law school, he served as the law clerk for the Honorable Randy J. Holland of the Supreme Court of Delaware. He then was associated for four years with the Delaware law firm Potter Anderson & Corroon LLP, where his practice focused on intellectual property litigation in the United States District Court for the District of Delaware.
In 1998, the Supreme Court of Delaware appointed Professor McGinniss to its Office of Disciplinary Counsel ("ODC"), entrusting him with the evaluation, investigation, and prosecution of lawyer disciplinary matters before the Court and its Board on Professional Responsibility. During his twelve years of service as Disciplinary Counsel, he was responsible for hundreds of matters opened by the ODC based on complaints by clients or other members of the public and on referrals from courts, administrative agencies, and other sources. At ODC, he was also responsible for evaluating, investigating and prosecuting matters involving the unauthorized practice of law, and presenting hearings before the Board of Bar Examiners involving the character and fitness of bar applicants. As Disciplinary Counsel, Professor McGinniss made dozens of continuing legal education presentations and speaking appearances before lawyers and judges in order to promote a culture of professionalism and an ongoing understanding by lawyers of their ethical obligations. In 2006, he joined the adjunct faculty of the Widener University of School of Law, where he taught Professional Responsibility and upper-level Legal Methods courses. He is a member of the bars of Delaware, the United States District Court for the District of Delaware, and the United States Supreme Court.
At the UND School of Law, Professor McGinniss has been honored as the 2011 and 2012 recipient of the J. Philip Johnson Faculty Fellow Award, given to promote professional responsibility, leadership and ethics, both in the legal profession and in the community. He was also selected from a nationwide pool of legal ethics teachers and scholars as one of ten Fall 2011 Fellows of the National Institute for Teaching Ethics and Professionalism. In January 2012, Professor McGinniss accepted an appointment by Chief Justice VandeWalle of the North Dakota Supreme Court to serve a three-year term as a member of the Joint Committee on Attorney Standards.
Professor McGinniss' current research and scholarship interests include questions concerning the professional, ethical and moral responsibilities of lawyers, as well as the relationships between courts and lawyer disciplinary agencies. In June 2011, he presented the Mart Vogel Lecture on Professionalism and Legal Ethics at the SBAND Annual Meeting in Fargo, entitled Virtue Ethics, Earnestness, and the Deciding Lawyer: Human Flourishing in a Legal Community. His article based on this lecture was subsequently published in Volume 87 of the North Dakota Law Review. His article entitled Sending the Message: Using Technology to Support Judicial Reporting of Lawyer Misconduct to State Disciplinary Agencies, has been accepted for publication in the fall 2012 issue of the Journal of the Professional Lawyer, the peer-reviewed academic journal of the ABA Center for Professional Responsibility. He has also published legal scholarship addressing the regulation of multi-jurisdictional practice and the unauthorized practice of law. See Five Years Later: The Delaware Experience With Multi-Jurisdictional Practice, 10 Del. L. Rev. 125 (2008); The Unauthorized Practice of Law, in History of the Delaware Bar From 1995 Through 2010 255 (Michael F. McTaggart ed. 2011); Unauthorized Practice of Law, in Delaware Supreme Court Golden Anniversary 1951-2001 425 (Randy J. Holland and Helen L. Winslow, eds. 2001).