David J. Elkanich is the Managing Shareholder of Buchalter’s Portland office. He is also a member of the Firm’s Litigation Practice Group, and Chair of the Firm’s Professional Responsibility Group.

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.

Among his substantial body of representative experience, Mr. Elkanich briefed and argued the following recent precedent-setting state court cases involving lawyer ethics and professional responsibility:

• In re Conduct of Harris, 366 Or. 475, 466 P.3d 22 (2020): holding that attorney did not violate rules against unauthorized practice of law when he acted as in-house counsel in Oregon pending his reciprocal admission to the bar because he was engaged in the provision of legal services on a temporary basis (even though he had accepted permanent employment in Oregon). See Oregon RPC 5.5(a), (c).
• Matter of Admission of Halttunen, 367 Or. 360, 478 P.3d 488 (2020): holding that applicant’s conduct did not categorically bar applicant from admission to state bar and that applicant met his burden of showing he had sufficiently reformed his character to warrant admission to the bar.
• In re Conduct of Conry, 368 Or 349, — P.3d — (2021): in a matter of first impression, the Court set out a framework analyzing when a lawyer may respond to negative social media posts, holding that a lawyer may do so under RPC 1.6(b)(4) as long as the response is within reason and to the extent that the lawyer believes is reasonably necessary.

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 as one of The Best Lawyers in America, Ethics and Professional Responsibility Law from 2016-2025, and was selected as the Ethics and Professional Responsibility Law Lawyer of the Year in 2021. He was featured in Oregon Super Lawyers magazine from 2017-2023, and as a “Rising Star” in 2012, 2013, and again from 2023 to 2024.