FREE ETHICS 2025 - The Guardian

Free Ethics 2025: The Guardian
Presented in Partnership with ALPS

 Friday, March 21, 2025 | 9:00 a.m. – 12:15 p.m.
 3.0 Ethics CLE Credits | CLE #2025311
 Registration fee: FREE
 Registration for Non-Bar Members: $95
 Webinar: Watch from Your Computer

 Pre-registration, at least 12 hours before the event begins, is required to watch the live program.   

Moderated by: Mark Bassingthwaighte, Esq., Risk Manager with ALPS
Panel Members: Phil Shanahan, Bar Counsel, Alaska Bar Association, Tim Petumenos, Law Office of Tim Petumenos, and Kate Demarest, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Opinions, Appeals, and Ethics, Department of Law

Program Description: 
The Guardian transports us to a boutique law firm that serves the legal needs of clients in the tech sector. One of the firm’s clients has asked if a few members of the firm would be willing to evaluate a beta version of a cutting-edge Ethics and Risk Management AI tool called Guardian AI designed to evaluate and enhance ethical and risk management decision-making in a variety of industries. The firm agreed and the testing is about to begin…  A panel of your peers will apply professional conduct rules and formal ethics opinions to their analysis of the issues presented.

Ethics Tonight faculty
Since 1998, Mark Bassingthwaighte, Esq. has been a Risk Manager with ALPS, the nation’s largest direct writer of lawyers’ malpractice insurance. In his tenure with the company, Mr. Bassingthwaighte has conducted over 1200 law firm risk management assessment visits, presented numerous continuing legal education seminars throughout the United States, and written extensively on risk management, ethics, and technology. 

Mr. Bassingthwaighte is a member of the State Bar of Montana as well as the American Bar Association where he currently sits on the ABA Center for Professional Responsibility’s Conference Planning Committee. He received his J.D. from Drake University Law School. 

Kate Demarest is a Senior Assistant Attorney General in the Opinions, Appeals, and Ethics section of the Department of Law. She spent seven years practicing general civil litigation with a strong appellate focus as a trial associate and then partner in the Anchorage office of Dorsey & Whitney before joining the Department of Law in 2017. Kate frequently supports the ethics advice functions of her section and serves on the Lawyers Fund for Client Protection bar Committee
 
Phil Shanahan grew up in the Boston area and graduated from Northeastern University School of Law in 1993. He moved to Alaska shortly after graduation and practiced as a criminal defense attorney in both state and federal courts.  After a few years in private practice sharing office space with some of Anchorage’s best and brightest criminal defense and family law attorneys, he joined the Office of Public Advocacy.  In 2007 he joined a private criminal defense firm, and opened his own criminal defense practice in 2010.  He is a founding member of the Alaska Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and served on its Board of Directors for four years, including one year as a marginally-effective Secretary of the Board. He began his role as Bar Counsel with the Alaska Bar Association in December of 2019.  

Phil is a diehard fan of all Boston sports teams, but realizes he has an ethical duty to work with even Yankees fans (when absolutely necessary). 

Tim Petumenos graduated from Tufts University in 1973 and Georgetown University Law Center in 1976.  Mr. Petumenos has been involved in some of the more celebrated Alaska trials in the course of his career including the Senator George Hohman bribery cases, the McKay murder trials and was lead counsel in the state trial of the Exxon Valdez Oil spill.  His practice also focused on ethics related issues.  Mr. Petumenos served on Disciplinary Hearing Committees for the Bar and was appointed as Special Counsel in connection with gubernatorial ethics complaints during the Palin administration.  Mr. Petumenos litigated numerous legal malpractice cases and has been qualified as an expert witness in legal malpractice cases.  He is a certified teacher with the National Institute for Trial Advocacy and has taught trial advocacy on numerous occasions for the Alaska Bar Association, at the Northwest Regional Session of NITA and for prosecutorial agencies. Mr. Petumenos intends to devote much of his future practice to presiding over complex binding arbitrations.