David Atkins

David P. Atkins is a Visiting Lecturer in Law at Yale Law School. He is a partner in the Connecticut law firm of Pullman & Comley, LLC, where he leads the firm’s Professional Liability Section and chaired the firm’s Litigation Department from 2013 to 2015. He regularly represents professionals, including attorneys and law firms, in malpractice actions, practice dissolution and fee disputes, licensing, court sanctions proceedings, and disciplinary (grievance) matters. He also is frequently engaged by law firms and corporate legal departments for risk management advice and regularly testifies as an expert opinion witness on lawyer ethics and in professional liability disputes. He acts as a mediator in disputes between co-owners of professional service practices as well as a bar association mediator and arbitrator in lawyer-client fee disputes.

Atkins has written and spoken widely on attorney regulation and discipline, professional ethics, law firm loss prevention, legal malpractice, and the “law of lawyering.” He routinely speaks on those topics at continuing legal education programs of the America and Connecticut Bar Associations and local bar associations. He has been a guest lecturer on professional responsibility at the University of Connecticut School of Law and at Yale Law School. In 2022 he was an adjunct professor at Quinnipiac University School of Law teaching its Lawyers’ Professional Responsibility course. He served two non-consecutive terms on the Board of Directors of the national Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers.

Atkins clerked for Hon. Almeric L. Christian, U.S. District Court for the District of the Virgin Islands (1981 to 1983).

He is a 1978 graduate of Columbia University and a 1981 graduate of Yale Law School.