Myles Lynk, Emeritus Professor of Law and the Legal Profession at Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law and Dean of the Emeritus College at Arizona State University, has been honored with the 2025 Outstanding Service Award from the Fellows of the American Bar Foundation (ABF). Lynk will be recognized during the 69th Annual Fellows Awards Reception and Banquet, which will be held in Phoenix on February 1.
The Outstanding Service Award is given to an individual who has, in their professional career, adhered to the highest principles and traditions of the legal profession and to the service of the public. This year, the ABF recognizes Lynk for his exceptional record of service and commitment to advocacy for civil rights throughout his career.
“Myles Lynk is at the forefront of advocacy for civil rights and for ethical behavior within the legal profession,” said ABF Fellows National Chair Frank Neuner. “Throughout his career, his service to the public and the legal community has been impactful and wide-ranging. It’s an honor to recognize Myles Lynk with this award.”
While a full-time faculty member at ASU, Lynk held appointments as an Honors Faculty Fellow in Barrett, The Honors College, and as a Senior Fellow in the Lincoln Center for Applied Ethics at ASU. Lynk’s research focused on the tension between lawyers’ ethical duties to clients, their own personal interests, and their special responsibilities as public citizens responsible for the quality of justice.
Before coming to ASU in 2000 as a visiting scholar from practice, Lynk was a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of a large national law firm. Before this, he served on the White House Domestic Policy Staff in the Carter Administration and was a law clerk to Judge Damon J. Keith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
In the American Bar Association (ABA), Lynk has served on the Board of Governors, chaired the Minority Caucus of the House of Delegates, and chaired the Section of Civil Rights and Social Justice. Lynk also chaired the ABA’s Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility, where he pushed to add discrimination and sexual harassment to the Model Rules of Professional Conduct as forms of professional misconduct. Lynk chaired the ABA’s Special Committee on Bioethics and the Law and partnered with the TTIPS Section for its conference, “Bioethics, Minorities, and the Law: Rights and Remedies,” at Tuskegee University in 2002.
Lynk served on the Board of the Council on Legal Education Opportunity, and on the Commission on Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Profession. He also served on the ABA’s Hurricane Katrina Task Force and, in September of 2005, represented the ABA in Louisiana at the summit meeting of legal professionals providing aid to victims of Hurricane Katrina.
In 2015, Lynk participated in the deliberations that resulted in, and was one of the fifteen signatories to, the ABA-LDF Joint Statement on Eliminating Bias in the Criminal Justice System, issued by the ABA and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc. The statement addressed some of the roles of lawyers in addressing racial bias in the American criminal justice system.
Lynk is a Life Fellow of the ABF. He served as the Chair of the District of Columbia Fellows of the ABF and as the National Chair of the Fellows. Lynk has served on the Board of Directors of the Sandra Day O’Connor Institute for American Democracy, the Governing Council of the American Law Institute, and on the Chandler, Arizona Human Relations Commission.
He is a recipient of the Faculty of the Year Award from the ASU College of Law Alumni Association, the Arizona Black Bar Association’s Excellence in Diversity Award, the American Bar Association’s Spirit of Excellence Award, and the American Bar Association’s Father Robert F. Drinan Award, among other honors.
“I am humbled and deeply honored to receive this Award from the Fellows of the American Bar Foundation,” said Lynk. “It has been my privilege to have worked over the years with so many lawyers who are dedicated to public service and professional excellence. I have learned from them, and hope I used what I have learned to better serve the goals of our profession and the needs of others.”
###
About the American Bar Foundation
The American Bar Foundation (ABF) is the world’s leading research institute for the empirical and interdisciplinary study of law. The ABF seeks to expand knowledge and advance justice through innovative, interdisciplinary, and rigorous empirical research on law, legal processes, and legal institutions. To further this mission the ABF will produce timely, cutting-edge research of the highest quality to inform and guide the legal profession, the academy, and society in the United States and internationally. The ABF’s primary funding is provided by the American Bar Endowment and the Fellows of The American Bar Foundation.