Deborah Rhode, Stanford law professor and authority on legal ethics, dies at 68

As a law student at Yale in the mid-1970s, Deborah Rhode worked at a legal aid clinic, helping clients who were unable to afford lawyers for their divorce cases. Local lawyers were charging too much, she recalled — $1,000 just to fill out paperwork — so she and her colleagues created a “how to” kit for clients interested in representing themselves.

Instead of being praised for their initiative, Dr. Rhode and the clinic faced legal threats from the bar association, which threatened to sue for the unauthorized practice of law.

The organization backed down after a women’s support group offered to put its name on the kits, providing cover for the clinic.

But the confrontation left Rhode disillusioned, convinced that the bar had been fighting to preserve a monopoly over legal services. “I was angry all the time,” she later said. “I didn’t have the stomach for direct services.”

Instead, she channeled her advocacy efforts through the academy, joining the faculty at Stanford Law School and becoming one of the country’s foremost experts on legal ethics. In recent years she emerged as the field’s most frequently cited scholar, topping scholarly rankings compiled by Brian Leiter, a University of Chicago law professor.