Nathan M. Crystal, General Attorney in Charleston, South Carolina

Professional Experience

Nathan Crystal is a scholar and a practicing attorney. He has advised individuals and entities, including major law firms, on matters of contract law and professional ethics and has lectured throughout the world on these subjects. He frequently serves as expert witness or consultant in multimillion dollar cases.

Nathan Crystal is a Class of 1969 Professor Emeritus of Professional Responsibility and Contract Law, University of South Carolina. He taught for 34 years at the University of South Carolina School of Law. He currently teaches Professional Responsibility at NYU as as an adjunct professor.

Professor Crystal concentrates in the areas of professional responsibility and contract law.

He has been a member of the South Carolina Bar Ethics Advisory Committee for more than 20 years and served as chair of the Committee from 2002-2003. Professor Crystal was associate dean of the USC Law School from 1987-1992 and director of its Center on the Legal Profession from 1991-1999. He has held visiting appointments and lectureships at Arkansas (Little Rock), Florida State, Hastings, Indiana (Indianapolis), Luiss (Rome), Scuola Superiore Santa'Anna (Pisa), Suffolk, Sydney (Parsons Visiting Scholar), Nankai University, Tianjin, China. Professor Crystal currently serves as the Chair of the International Law Committee of the South Carolina Bar and serves in the New York City Bar Ethics Advisory Committee.

He has consulted on matters of Contracts and Professional Responsibility for almost 40 years and served as a testifying or consulting expert in more than 100 cases.

In 2011, he co-founded, together with Francesca Giannoni-Crystal, Crystal & Giannoni-Crystal LLC.

Education

He holds degrees from the University of Pennsylvania (Wharton School), Emory Law School where he was second in his class and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Public Law (now the Emory Law Review). He has a LLM degree from Harvard Law School.

Publications

Professor Crystal is the author or coauthor of four books, three on legal ethics and one on contract law:

• PROFESSIONAL RESPONSIBILITY - PROBLEMS OF PRACTICE AND THE PROFESSION (Aspen Law & Business 5th ed. 2011)
• AN INTRODUCTION TO PROFESSIONAL RESPONSIBILITY (Aspen Law & Business 1998)
• ANNOTATED SOUTH CAROLINA RULES OF PROFESSIONAL CONDUCT (S.C. Bar 2013 ed.) (with Robert M. Wilcox)
• PROBLEMS IN CONTRACT LAW: CASES AND MATERIALS (with Charles Knapp and Harry G. Prince) (7th ed. 2012)

His books on contracts and ethics are widely adopted by law schools around the US.

In addition to his books, Professor Crystal has published numerous articles in scholarly journals, including the Akron Law Review, Fordham Law Review, Global Jurist, Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics, Illinois Law Review, Kansas Law Review, Kentucky Law Journal, Mercer Law Review, Notre Dame Journal of Law Ethics and Public Policy, NYU Annual Survey of American Law, Saint Mary's Law Journal, Saint Louis Law Journal, South Carolina Law Review, Wake Forest Law Review, and Washington Law Review. He authors a bimonthly column, "Ethics Watch," for the South Carolina Lawyer. Professor Crystal lectures frequently on matters of professional ethics to national, regional, and local organizations, including the American Bar Association and the United States Justice Department (his most recent major articles are "One, No one and One Hundred Thousand" ... - which ethical rule to apply? Conflict of ethical rules in international arbitration, 32 Miss. C.L. Rev. 283 (2013) and “Something’s got to give” – Cloud Computing, as applied to lawyers – comparative approach US and EU and practical proposals to overcome differences, Opinio Juris in Comparatione Vol.I, n.I, 2014 (available at https://www.opiniojurisincomparatione.org/), both coathored with Francesca Giannoni-Crystal).

Languages

English (mother tongue)

Professional Affiliations

• American Bar Association
• South Carolina Bar
• Georgia Bar
• Association of Professional Responsibility
• American Association for Justice
• New York City Bar Association
• New York State Bar Association

Professor Crystal serves as the Chair of the International Law Committee of the South Carolina Bar.

Professor Crystal serves in the New York City Bar Ethics Advisory Committee.

Nathan Crystal was recently selected by his peers for inclusion in The Best Lawyers in America© 2016 in the fields of Ethics and Professional Responsibility Law.

Nathan Crystal was recently selected by his peers for inclusion in The Best Lawyers in America© 2015 in the fields of Ethics and Professional Responsibility Law.