Michael Elkin

The Chicago attorney who originally represented convicted murderer Heather L. Mack following her arrest in Bali in August 2014, Michael David Elkin, has been reinstated to the bar following a more than four-year suspension of his law license.

The Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission hearing board announced the reinstatement last week.

On Sept. 22, 2017, the Illinois Supreme Court ordered Elkin’s law license suspended “for a year and until further order of the court,” after he was found to have failed to properly discharge his responsibilities to three clients, and failing to return some $8,000 in unearned fees.

Elkin had sought reinstatement since December 2019 without success.

Elkin, who passed the bar in 2005 and started his own law firm in 2013, had touted his selection by the National Trial Lawyers Association “to its Top 100 Trial Lawyers (2012 through 2014).”

However, between 2008 and 2012, Elkin had suffered a series of traumatic events, including a divorce, his mother’s cancer diagnosis and the death of his father. He also struggled with an undiagnosed anxiety disorder.

In the 18-page finding that approved his reinstatement, a three-person hearing board noted that at first, Elkin was “able to handle his cases and take on some pro bono matters but after his first year of practice, his second marriage began to deteriorate, and he started falling behind.”

Then on Aug. 13, 2014, Heather Mack, who Elkin said he’d met on “a couple occasions in Chicago,” phoned Elkin from Bali as she faced imminent arrest for her mother’s murder. He agreed to represent her, and threw himself into the case, but the highly public task, covered by media around the world, proved to be more than he was prepared to handle.

The ARDC noted that Elkin “traveled to Indonesia for two weeks, became obsessed with the case, and remained involved in it after returning home, to the detriment of his other work.”

“He knew some of his clients were very upset and had contacted the ARDC.”

Elkin was in numerous media reports regarding the Mack case, including radio interviews. On April 7, 2016, the Associated Press reported on an Elkin press release in which he disclosed that Heather Mack had “vomited blood” in prison.”

That was the last such announcement by Elkin related to the Mack case. The ARDC noted that “In the spring of 2016, (Elkin) discontinued his representation of (Heather Mack),” the hearing board wrote, (although court records show he didn’t formally ask to withdraw from Heather Mack’s Chancery court case until October 2017, after he’d been suspended).

Things came to a head medically for Elkin In May 2016, when, according the ARDC, he sought medical treatment at a hospital “because his anxiety led him to believe he was having a heart attack.”

Elkin consulted his psychiatrist, who recommended he “extricate himself” from his current environment and go to Israel where he had a support system.”

Elkin, the hearing board wrote, “believes if he had been more experienced, he would have declined to take some cases, especially the Indonesian case, and would have withdrawn from cases he could not handle appropriately. He testified he was in a state of panic at the time, was not thinking rationally, and did not fully understand his mental health condition.”

Elkin has reportedly spent the intervening four years working on assorted personal, mental health and character issues, attending to his precarious finances and trying to help others.

“Petitioner has proved his rehabilitation by clear and convincing evidence,” the hearing board wrote. It found Elkin to be “currently of good character “and recommended reinstatement with several conditions, including weekly mental health therapy, regular monitoring of his legal work, submitting quarterly reports to the ARDC probation officer, and full cooperation with any investigations into his behavior.

The ARDC said that Elkin “plans to join a firm rather than work for himself as he feels he will benefit from being in a structured environment mentored by senior attorneys.”

At least two established attorneys have reportedly offered to mentor him, and one told the ARDC he would consider hiring Elkin, saying he feels he “is in a good place and is ready to return to practice.”