Biography
Sarah Diane McShea has practiced in the legal ethics/professional responsibility field for 44 years. She served as Deputy Chief Counsel to the First Department’s Departmental Disciplinary Committee and Bureau Chief of the Public Corruption Bureau in the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office. Since 1993, McShea has maintained a solo practice advising lawyers, law firms, in-house counsel, and government lawyers on professional responsibility and legal ethics issues. She advises on law firm mergers and dissolutions; lateral lawyer moves; closing law practices; conflicts issues; sanctions and disqualification motions; and fee disputes and marketing question. She represents lawyers in disciplinary proceedings and bar applicants in character and fitness inquiries. She serves as an expert witness on professional responsibility issues.
McShea served on the Editorial Advisory Board of the ABA/BNA (Bloomberg Law) Lawyers' Manual on Professional Conduct from 1994-2023. She is a founding member and Past President of the Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers (APRL). McShea currently serves on the New York State Bar Association’s Committee on Professional Ethics and its Professional Discipline Committee. She is a former member of NYSBA’s Committee on Standards of Attorney Conduct (COSAC) and its Committee on Law Practice Management, where she chaired the Law Practice Continuity subcommittee which issued the Planning Ahead Guide (now in its 3rd Edition). She was a contributing editor to The New York Rules of Professional Conduct (Oxford University Press). Recent articles for the New York State Bar Association Journal include “Professional Obligations for Lawyers – Are You in Compliance?” (May 2019) and “Professional Obligations for Lawyers: Tax Returns! (August 2019). She taught professional responsibility as an adjunct professor at Columbia, Fordham, Brooklyn and St. John’s law schools and has been a guest lecturer at New York University, New York and Cardozo School of Law. She graduated from Yale College and Boston University School of Law.