What the release does not mention is where Hynes spent the bulk of her career. For about 24 years she was a partner at the now-indicted law firm that was known, from mid-1993 to mid-2004, as Milberg Weiss Bershad Hynes & Lerach. She’s that Hynes. She left the firm in late August 2006, about three months after the indictment came down. For more than ten years, from the late 1980s until she took “of counsel” status in 2000, she also served on Milberg Weiss’s executive committee. (The Wall Street Journal Law Blog noted the omission at the time in the last paragraph of this post.)

The firm, now known simply as Milberg Weiss, has been charged with conspiring, from at least 1979 through 2005, to obstruct justice and make “false material declarations under oath” in federal court proceedings. In other words, the case is about lying. It alleges lying day-in and day-out, year after year, decade after decade, to federal judges, to opposing counsel, and to absent class members — i.e., the firm’s clients. The lies were allegedly intended to conceal $11.3 million in secret payments and kickbacks that the firm is said to have paid to named plaintiffs in more than 225 class actions.

The firm and its co-founder, Melvyn Weiss, have each pleaded not guilty. But former name partners David Bershad and William Lerach, as well as Hynes’s successor on the firm name plate, Steven Schulman, have all pleaded guilty. (Firm co-founder Lawrence Milberg died in 1989.) Four other non-Milberg defendants have also pleaded guilty, including three named plaintiffs who say they took secret payments from the firm. The government also alleges in the indictment that over the course of the conspiracy three other “senior partners” at the firm, identified only as Partners E, F, and G, were also participants. To be clear, I’m not suggesting that Hynes might be one of them. On the contrary, I assume she wasn’t.

Last July, before her nomination, I called Hynes to ask what, if anything, she’d known about the wrongdoing alleged at her firm. She said: “I have no comment. I’m not talking to any press on the Milberg Weiss situation. Thank you.”

When I learned she’d been nominated to become president of the City bar I assumed that, surely, that policy had changed. But evidently it hasn’t.

Hynes has not responded to a detailed e-mail and two phone messages left Wednesday and Thursday seeking comment on what she knew about wrongdoing at her former firm. If she responds, either to that question or to what I’ve written here, I’ll print her response.

Alan Rothstein, the City Bar’s general counsel, said in an interview that “the nominating committee did it’s due diligence with regard to that and was fully satisfied that Pat Hynes had absolutely nothing to do with the events that happened at Milberg.” When I asked for additional detail, he said, “That’s pretty much what I can tell you.”

Asked about why the press release did not mention Hynes’s career at Milberg Weiss, Rothstein said that the release follows the standard protocol for such announcements; “the usual form is to indicate where the person is now and their public service. We don’t go through their firm histories.”

I have qualms about what’s happening here. In addition to all the wonderful things that Hynes unquestionably is, she also appears to have been a major-league dupe. While being a dupe is not unethical, and certainly not illegal, it’s no badge of honor, either. For idealistic young law students making their career choices, it must have been reassuring if not inspirational to see former Manhattan executive assistant U.S. attorney Pat Hynes’s name so prominently displayed on Milberg’s letterhead. It vouched for the integrity of the whole operation. Whether she knew it or not, part of what she was being paid to do there for 24 years was to lend the firm an aura of integrity that, judging from three top partners’ guilty pleas, it didn’t deserve.

Assuming the nominating committee’s right, and that Hynes knew nothing about the wrongdoing occuring at the firm, she still gravely misjudged the character of at least three of her most powerful colleagues. (If the indictment is right, she misjudged seven of them!) The very fact that the government has chosen to indict the whole firm suggests that the U.S. Department of Justice, unlike the City Bar, regards what happened there as much more than the aberrational acts of a few bad apples.

Silence cannot be used against one in criminal proceedings. But silence can be used against one in many civil proceedings, and it most certainly can — and ought to be — used against anyone who is affirmatively seeking some extraordinary honor or high office.

The questions I would like to ask are basic things: When did she first learn of the criminal investigation? What inquiries did she make at that time? What responses were provided to her, and by whom? When she was on the executive committee, was she ever asked to leave the room while others stayed behind to engage in further discussions? If so, what did she make of that?

If she answered such questions for the nominating committee — and I assume she must have — why can’t she answer them in public?

Again, to be clear: I don’t think Hynes’s tenure at Milberg Weiss necessarily disqualifies her from serving as president of the City Bar. Maybe if the public had heard her say whatever she told the nominating committee, it would understand why the City Bar feels comfortable choosing her as its next president. But the public hasn’t heard any such thing.

The City Bar takes itself seriously. It issues reports opining on the proper treatment of detainees in the war on terror, on the plight of lawyers in Pakistan, the death penalty, reporter-shield laws, campaign finance laws, and class-action reform. What sort of moral authority will the City Bar’s voice carry over the next two years while its president’s former firm goes on trial (set to begin August 12, 2008) for allegedly having made a mockery of attorneys’ most basic obligations of candor to court, adversaries, and clients, and she is unwilling to discuss what she knew or didn’t know about it.

This nomination should have been postponed until such time as Hynes feels free to answer questions in public about the nearly quarter century she spent at Milberg Weiss.

Mine is evidently a minority view, though. The members of the nominating committee — each a titan of the New York bar — all disagree with me. (Rothstein told me the committee’s vote was unanimous.) They were E. Leo Milonas, chairman (former City Bar president and former state supreme court justice, Appellate Division); Preeta D. Bansal (the head of Skadden Arps’s appellate practice); Robert B. Fiske, Jr. (partner at Davis Polk and former U.S. Attorney for Manhattan); Sara Moss (Estee Lauder’s general counsel); Carlos G. Ortiz (Goya Foods’ general counsel); Milton L. Williams (state supreme court justice, Appellate Division); and Mary Marsh Zulack (Columbia law professor). Nominating committee chairman Milonas did not return two phone messages.

Under the City Bar’s by-laws, any member can theoretically petition for permission to run against Hynes, but if no one does so by February 8 — and typically no one does — Hynes will be declared the 63rd president of the 137-year-old association at its annual meeting on May 20, taking her place alongside the likes of Cyrus Vance, Whitney North Seymour, and Charles Evans Hughes. (Disclosure: I’m a member of the City bar, though not a very active one.)

What do readers think about this situation?

[Correction: An earlier version of this post noted that two named plaintiffs used by Milberg to bring class actions had pleaded guilty to accepting secret kickbacks from the  firm; actually three have.]