As you hopefully may recall my name is Ryan Moriarty and alongside Darrell Felsenstein, we are the Statewide Coordinators for the New Jersey Supreme Court’s District Ethics and Fee Arbitration Committees, respectively.

As a refresher, the District Fee Arbitration Committees (DFACs) offer a low-cost alternative to litigation when disputes arise between an attorney and client as to the attorney’s fee. The DFACs conduct arbitration hearings and then make a binding arbitration determination regarding whether either the client or attorney is due payment.

The District Ethics Committees (DECs) investigate, prosecute, and preside over allegations of attorney misconduct. Volunteer attorney members have the opportunity to investigate the allegations, make charging determinations, present those cases before a hearing panel and argue them before the Disciplinary Review Board, the intermediate appellate body of the disciplinary system.  

Our statewide programs are staffed and primarily run by volunteer attorney and public members. They both provide invaluable opportunities for attorneys to give back to the legal community while ensuring the public is protected and the integrity in the profession remains high. Both programs offer:

• Exemptions from the Madden requirements,
• The annual award of four ethics/professionalism CLEs as a function of Rule, and
• Other CLE opportunities throughout the year.

They also offer the opportunity for the volunteers to learn about different areas of the law and new and valuable attorney skills they may not otherwise have the opportunity. All for free. Also new beginning in 2024 was the confirmation that retired attorneys can serve as volunteers without jeopardizing their retired status.

As we have seen, the membership of your organization continues to be invaluable in both of these committees and hope that you will spread the word to your membership that we are seeking applications for our 2025 recruitment cycle. We have attached an application for your ease of use and distribution. Applications are due back by May 2, 2025, and can be sent to either of our attentions or oae.mbx@njcourts.gov.

We sent a similar call for volunteers last year and as a result were able to make connections with various organizations throughout the State, provided CLEs, and received great volunteer interest. We hope to continue to build off those connections in the coming year and beyond.

If you have any questions or want to discuss further, I can be reached at ryan.moriarty@njcourts.gov or 609-403-7800 ext. 34125 and Darrell can be reached at darrell.felsenstein@njcourts.gov  609-403-7800 ext. 34135.