Bar Association Programs
The Fiduciary League engages bar sections as an independent standards body — not as a vendor.
The League's Role in Bar Engagement
Wire fraud targeting professional transactions — real estate closings, M&A disbursements, fund distributions — is a documented, recurring threat to clients of the bar's members. The mechanism is not novel: spoofed or compromised email from an attorney's domain, intercepted wire instructions, redirected closing funds. The professional obligation to prevent it is already present in bar rules governing client fund security and confidentiality. What is absent, in most cases, is a specific, independently verified, publicly documented standard against which a firm's communication infrastructure can be measured.
The Fiduciary League provides that standard. The League's five-standard evaluation framework — covering email authentication, domain security, credential integrity, certificate transparency, and web application security — is published, citable, and evaluated against public records without notice, without firm cooperation, and without fee to the evaluated firm. The result is a public registry entry that any counterparty, institution, or regulatory body can reference.
The League is not a technology vendor, a cybersecurity firm, or a software provider. It does not provide remediation services, consulting, or IT assessment. It sets standards, evaluates against them, and publishes the record. That independence is the basis for bar section engagement.
CLE Programming
The League has developed CLE curriculum addressing business email compromise as a professional liability and ethics matter — not as an IT subject. The program is structured for bar sections whose members handle client funds in a transactional context: real estate sections, business law sections, trust and estate sections, and commercial transactions sections.
Program Overview — Communication Integrity and the Fiduciary Obligation
- The professional duty to safeguard client communications under state bar ethics rules
- How BEC works: the mechanism, the frequency, the financial impact
- What the five-standard framework measures and why each standard matters for professional liability
- How to verify a firm's communication posture using the public registry
- Practical protocols for wire instruction verification before closing
- What to do when a client reports a compromised transaction
90-minute format. Qualifies for general CLE credit and, in applicable states, ethics credit. Speaker: Monte Phillips, Principal Analyst, The Fiduciary League.
Member Advisory
Bar sections may request a briefing on the League's evaluation findings within their membership. The League can provide aggregate, non-identified reporting on the communication posture of bar members in a given sector or geography — the percentage meeting each published standard, the most common failure modes, and how posture has changed over time. This is an information resource for section leadership, not a public report.
Member advisory briefings are provided at no cost to bar sections, subject to scheduling availability.
Standards Reference for Ethics Guidance
Bar ethics committees that wish to reference the League's published standards in guidance, opinions, or member advisories may do so. The full framework specification is published at fiduciaryleague.org/standards and each standard is citable by name, number, and version. The League is available to provide technical clarification to ethics committee staff upon request.
How to Engage
Bar association section chairs, CLE coordinators, and ethics committee staff may contact the League directly. The League communicates by physical mail and by phone.
Bar Association Inquiries
Monte Phillips · Principal Analyst, The Fiduciary League
Mail: 1200 Fourth St #729, Key West, FL 33040
Phone: 305-980-7229
The League's communication policy: electronic communication is not initiated with bar section staff unless under an active engagement. Initial outreach by the League is by physical mail. Responses by email or phone are welcome.