In 2010, the State Bar of California created the Harry B. Sondheim Professional Responsibility Award in honor of the retired attorney who has lived in Pacific Palisades since 1960 and has been an active member of the Community Council for 25 years.
Citing Sondheim’s “invaluable contribution to the State Bar and to the legal profession in California,” the State Bar said the award would be given out every three years in recognition of a member’s “outstanding contribution to the advancement of attorney professional responsibility standards in California.”
Last Saturday at the State Bar’s Annual Ethics Symposium at UCLA, the Sondheim award was presented to 84-year-old attorney Paul W. Vapnek, an intellectual property attorney in San Francisco who has devoted more than 40 years to legal ethics.
Sondheim, 77, noted in his letter of support that by working with Vapnek over the years on various professional responsibility committees, he came to “realize what an asset Paul is in the field of legal ethics.”
“He consistently provided both excellent work product and well thought out guidance to each of these groups, thereby demonstrating how knowledgeable he is in the field of ethics and how he applies his knowledge for the betterment of the bar, while also giving appropriate weight to the needs of our clients,” Sondheim wrote.
Sondheim himself “has been living and breathing State Bar Rules of Professional Conduct for a quarter of a century,” said the State Bar Journal, which cited his “career-long commitment to lawyer competence and public protection.”
The award was conferred upon Sondheim based on the following accomplishments: (1) service as the chair of the State Bar’s Commission for the Revision of the Rules of Professional Conduct (in both the 1980’s as the original Chair of the Commission and also during its current iteration, for a total of approximately 14 years of volunteer service); (2) service as a member of the State Bar’s Standing Committee on Professional Responsibility and Conduct (COPRAC) for two separate non-consecutive terms (advancing to committee chair during both of his terms on COPRAC, for approximately 11 more years of volunteer service); (3) service as a member of the Los Angeles County Bar Association ethics committee; (4) founder of the Professional Responsibility Unit of the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office (the first of its kind in the United States); and (5) service on the State Bar’s Anti-Bias Rule Committee.
Sondheim, who was born in Giessen, Germany, was just two years old when his parents escaped the Nazi regime in 1938—“just in time,” he told the Palisadian-Post. The family immigrated to Chicago, where they had a sponsor, and Harry eventually earned his undergraduate and law school degrees at the University of Chicago.
Sondheim and his first wife, Branka (who died in 2004), married in 1958 and moved to the Palisades in 1960.
Straight out of law school in 1957, Harry worked as a criminal prosecutor in the State Attorney General’s Office in Los Angeles for two years and then the L.A. District Attorney’s office until his retirement in 1994.
In the late 1980s, Sondheim volunteered to serve as legal counsel to the Community Council, and he later served as council chairman (2000-2002) and now as Area Four representative.
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