Here’s something Mark Teicher wants people to know: For every bad lawyer people have ever heard about, there’s an army of good lawyers working to make things right. Teicher is part of that force working for good as a member of the State Bar of Michigan Client Protection Fund Committee.
His volunteer work is inspired by a desire to both help clients and uphold the integrity of the legal profession. “I know it sounds hokey, but I believe it’s an honor and a privilege to be a lawyer, and then here are these lawyers who are making us all look bad,” Teicher said.
The Client Protection Fund was established in 1966 by the SBM Board of Commissioners and approved by the Michigan Supreme Court the same year. Created to provide restitution to clients who have suffered due to attorney theft, Teicher has been a part of the committee for more than 15 years.
Teicher first heard of the Client Protection Fund in 2006 as a hearing officer for Attorney Discipline Board. After one particular case in which a lawyer had stolen money from a client, he and the other members discussed how the client might get their money back. That was when a colleague mentioned in passing that the client could also go to the Client Protection Fund.
“This sounds very appropriate,” he remembers thinking at the time, “but what is it?”
Teicher has been a member of the SBM Representative Assembly since 1986 and at a meeting following that incident, he decided to sign up to be a part of the Client Protection Fund Committee. “Next thing I knew, I was on it,” he said with laugh. “They couldn’t get rid of me.”
He’s been a part of it ever since, serving in that time as an advisor, co-chair, and chair. (He has also been known for many years as the chairperson of the ad hoc committee on dessert, making sure there are always tasty treats on hand for meetings.) During his tenure on the committee, it has approved more than 835 claims and put more than $8 million back in the hands of clients who have been wronged.
As a member of the committee, his work has included developing rule changes, amending subrogation agreements, and communicating to courts and attorneys on behalf of the Client Protection Fund. He is particularly proud of the committee’s efforts to increase its diversity — not just in terms of race, gender, and ethnicity, but also geographically by getting more members from across Michigan and from different areas of legal expertise.
“The Client Protection Fund Committee’s work is extremely important because it protects the public from bad acting lawyers, and I think it reassures the public in general … that the system does work. And when it doesn’t work, there are attorneys there and the system is there to help them as much as possible,” he said. Teicher wants more Michigan attorneys to know the Client Protection Fund exists and that there is real value in volunteering your time and talents with the State Bar of Michigan. In 2017, he was honored with the Representative Assembly’s Michael Frank Award. In his acceptance speech, he spoke about, among other things, the importance of his work with the Client Protection Fund and left his peers with a lesson he learned along the way.
“Just get involved in some way,” he said. “Whether or not it’s to sit on the Representative Assembly, whether or not it’s to sit on a committee, whatever it might be.”