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Steven Krane is a Partner in the Litigation & Dispute Resolution Department, co-head of the Law Firm Practice Group, concentrating in the field of legal ethics and professional responsibility, and is Proskauer's General Counsel, responsible for providing professional legal advice to the firm.

Steven represents law firms and individual lawyers in a variety of professional matters, including rendering opinions and counseling them on a daily basis on a broad range of professional matters including conflicts of interest, client confidentiality, cross-border legal practice issues, partnership disputes, internal investigations, ancillary businesses and alternative business structures for law firms. In addition, he defends law firms in litigated proceedings involving legal malpractice and other civil claims, represents individual lawyers before grievance and disciplinary committees and assists lawyers in disputes concerning admission to the Bar. He has served as a litigation consultant and expert witness testifying on a variety of issues such as conflicts of interest, litigation conduct, legal malpractice, billing disputes, and solicitation of clients by lawyers leaving a law firm.

Steven is among the nation’s leaders in developing and interpreting the rules governing the professional conduct of lawyers. He is the immediate past chair of the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility, on which he served since 2004. For 14 years, he has led the New York State Bar Association committee that is responsible for formulating the ethical rules governing New York lawyers. In 2007, he was appointed by Chief Judge Kaye to be co-chair of the New York Judicial Institute on Professionalism in the Law. He served as vice-chair of the NYSBA Special Committee on the Law Governing Firm Structure and Operation (the “MacCrate Committee”), chaired the successor to that committee, the Special Committee on Multidisciplinary Practice, and was recently named Vice-Chair of the International Bar Association Committee on Multidisciplinary Practices.

Steven has had a distinguished career as a bar leader outside of the field of legal ethics as well, most notably serving as President of the NYSBA in 2001-2002; the youngest person to hold that post. He coordinated the efforts of the organized bar in responding to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001; initiated the NYSBA’s successful lawsuit against the Federal Trade Commission challenging the application of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act’s privacy provisions to the legal profession (serving as counsel to the NYSBA in the District of Columbia Circuit and as a member of the ABA’s Gramm-Leach-Bliley Task Force); and created and now chairs the Student Loan Assistance for the Public Interest program, which provides grants to lawyers in public interest jobs to help them defray their educational debts. Active in the community, he is a member of the Board of Directors of the Friends of the John Jay Homestead (Katonah, NY).

Steven is active in the development of law and policy relating to cross-border legal practice, and serves as one of the principal negotiators for the ABA and NYSBA in their efforts to achieve agreements with foreign governments to liberalize restrictions on lawyers. In that regard, he is Chair-Elect of the NYSBA Section on International Law and Practice; chairs the NYSBA Special Committee on Cross-Border Legal Practice; and is an Advisor to the ABA Task Force on International Trade in Legal Services. He was recently appointed to the Policy Committee of the Bar Issues Commission of the International Bar Association.

For several years, Steven taught legal ethics at Columbia University School of Law as a member of its adjunct faculty. He continues to be a frequent lecturer on ethics, and has written extensively on issues of professional responsibility.  

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