Her legal services continue under the auspices of Beryl P. Crowley Attorney & Counselor at Law, where she concentrates on Real Estate Legal Services and Legal Ethics related matters.

 

Real Estate:

The entire time Berry was in a law firm setting, she concentrated on all aspects of real estate law, including buying, selling, title matters, transactional matters, commercial lending, corporate transactions, all aspects of lending and development, and business related matters.  While there, she edited practice based newsletters, represented individual, corporate and lender and developer clients, and was well versed in all aspects of real estate law. She was active in the local (Austin) and state (State Bar of Texas) professional development and continuing legal education groups.  She was a speaker as well as author and participant in seminars, both locally and across the state. She is experienced in the areas of real estate acquisitions and sales; real estate title curative work; complex commercial leasing for both landlords and tenants; complex real estate and personal property finance from both the borrower’s and lender’s perspectives; real estate construction contracts and lending; and commercial loan work outs, foreclosures and restructuring.   She is experienced in ranch buying and selling, build to suit and multi-use purchase and development; condominium establishment, and anything related to transactional real estate in Texas.

 

Legal Ethics:

As Executive Director of the TCLEP from 1994-2006, she assisted and directed in its growth to the premier organization of its kind in the country. She created and developed innovative legal ethics and professionalism programs, including one adopted by the Texas Supreme Court as a training requirement for all newly licensed Texas lawyers, as well as being responsible for the innovative Ethics Jeopardy CLE program. She became well-versed and well-respected in all aspects of legal ethics, practice management, legal ethics consulting, malpractice and grievance prevention, risk mitigation and management, and tailored ethics CLE for lawyers and staff.

 

As a “legal ethics guru” Berry was experienced working with judges and courts throughout the state, including working directly with the Supreme Court on several initiatives, and was a popular and highly rated speaker at many continuing legal education seminars, author and lecturer, having written numerous articles for legal periodicals and journals, and is the editor of two books on ethics and professionalism topics, A Guide to the Basics of Law Practice Texas Center for Legal Ethics and Professionalism, 1995- 2004, and The Ethics Course, Texas Center for Legal Ethics and Professionalism.

 

She spoke to groups all over the country, including advising the Supreme Courts of both Utah and Oklahoma on their states’ legal ethics/professionalism initiatives. She lectured extensively.  She was the founder and chairman for 5 years of the State Bar of Texas Professionalism Committee, where she held a conclave of the deans of the state’s law schools in 1995 to discuss various ways the state could establish an Internship program for the state’s new lawyers (this was not to be).  She collated and published all the Ethics Opinions in loose-leaf book form, before then getting those Opinions and the Rules of Disciplinary Procedure and Disciplinary Rules of conduct on the internet.  She was an early adapter of online learning, and in the early 00’s was putting the Center’s continuing education programs online.  Berry’s familiarity with these resources and her expertise and practical knowledge of best practices ensure a high level of practice compliance for clients and save crucial time researching and analyzing complex ethics issues. Ms. Crowley concentrates on legal ethics consulting acting as “outside ethics counsel” to both firms that have their own ethics counsel and to individual lawyers and firms that require outside expertise in legal ethics compliance. As a Legal Ethics consultant, she knows that Texas lawyers confront a myriad of legal ethics issues in their daily practices.  Berry is available to consult with other lawyers and non-lawyers on these matters and help them sort through the myriad of problems to find a practical and ethical solution.