Amy Richardson is a partner with Harris, Wiltshire & Grannis, where she serves as co-chair of the Legal Ethics and Malpractice group and focuses her practice on legal ethics and malpractice, complex civil litigation and government enforcement actions. She practices in Washington, D.C. and Raleigh.
Richardson counsels and represents lawyers and law firms in disciplinary investigations and prosecutions and malpractice matters. Her disciplinary experience includes matters before state bars, the USPTO’s Office of Enrollment and Discipline and the Department of Justice Office of Professional Responsibility. She counsels and advises lawyers and law firms in partner admissions and departures, and law firm dissolutions. She teaches ethics and professional responsibility at the Georgetown University Law Center in addition to teaching Ethics and the Law of Lawyering at Duke Law.
Richardson also handles complex civil cases in federal court, state court, and in arbitration proceedings throughout the United States. She successfully represented one of the defendants in U.S. v. Price, Zaborsky & Ward, a high-profile obstruction of justice case in the District of Columbia Superior Court; the defendant was found not guilty at the conclusion of the two-month trial. She served as counsel in Hatfill v. Ashcroft, a Federal Privacy Act suit brought by Dr. Steven Hatfill stemming from a campaign of leaks in the government’s investigation of the anthrax attacks. Dr. Hatfill was fully exonerated by the FBI. The government ultimately paid Dr. Hatfill $5.8 million, one of the largest Privacy Act settlements in history.
Richardson has been recognized as a notable practitioner by Chambers USA, named a “Rising Star” by Super Lawyers, and ranked among Business North Carolina magazine’s “Legal Elite.” She serves as an advisory member of the North Carolina Bar Ethics Committee, as Secretary of the North Carolina Bar Association’s Litigation Council and as a member of the US Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims Committee on Admission and Practice.
Richardson clerked for Judge Carlton Tilley of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina after receiving her JD, cum laude, from Duke Law School. She received her BA, summa cum laude, from the University of North Carolina.
