David Elkanich
Managing Partner, Buchalter Portland Office

TITLE: CLE: The Algorithmic Advocate: Navigating the Ethical Frontier of AI in Legal Practice
Presenting Friday, August 7th  from 3:00-4:30 p.m. Pacific

Biography
Mr. Elkanich focuses his practice primarily on legal ethics, risk management, and discipline defense. He advises lawyers, law firms, in-house legal departments, as well as students and other professionals, on a variety of ethics issues, including conflicts of interest, confidentiality, fee disputes, internal investigations, law firm dissolutions and partnership disputes, malpractice and professional liability cases, and litigation issues, such as withdrawal and disqualification motions.

In addition, Mr. Elkanich represents lawyers, students and other professionals in front of regulatory authorities and bar associations on licensing, admissions, reciprocity, character and fitness, consumer protection, unauthorized practice of law, and disciplinary matters.

Mr. Elkanich frequently counsels lawyers and law firms regarding how they can innovate through legal technology and the creation of new policies and firm structures to address client needs and the changing legal landscape. In particular, Mr. Elkanich is interested in how lawyers navigate an “electronic” practice, including cloud computing, mining metadata, using social media, data privacy and security issues particular to lawyers.

Mr. Elkanich also represents businesses and individual professionals and executives in a wide variety of commercial litigation, including consumer protection, professional liability and partnership disputes.

Mr. Elkanich was the chair of the Anti-Bias Rule Drafting Committee in Oregon, which drafted an anti-bias ethics rule that was ultimately adopted as RPC 8.4(a)(7), making it professional misconduct for a lawyer to, “in the course of representing a client, knowingly intimidate or harass a person because of that person’s race, color, national origin, religion, age, sex, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status or disability.” He also spent three terms on the Oregon Legal Ethics Committee and is also an adjunct professor at Lewis & Clark Law School, where he has taught ethics since 2012.

Mr. Elkanich has been named one of The Best Lawyers in America for Ethics and Professional Responsibility Law from 2016 to 2026 and was selected as the Ethics and Professional Responsibility Law Lawyer of the Year in 2021 and 2026. Additionally, he has been featured in Oregon Super Lawyers magazine from 2017 to 2025 and was recognized as a “Rising Star” in 2012 and 2013.