Russel Murray III | Aurora Family Lawyer

Mr. Murray is the founder and President of Russel Murray III, P.C.   He is the Immediate Past Chair of the Colorado Bar Association Family Law Section (2001-2002), and has served as an elected member of the Colorado Bar Association's Family Law Section Executive Council since 1993.   As a member of the CBA Family Law Section's Executive Council, Mr. Murray established, and continues to chair the Family Law Section Ethics Committee and the Internet and Technology Committee.  For the 2002-2003 Term, Mr. Murray also chairs the Nominating Committee for the Family Law Section.

Russel is a member of the Colorado Bar Association Ethics Committee, the American Bar Association Family Law (Ethical Practice and Procedure Committee) and Criminal Justice Sections, and the ABA Center For Professional Responsibility. Additionally, Mr. Murray is a member of the Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers (APRL), the Colorado Criminal Defense Bar, the Arapahoe County Bar Association (Board of Directors; Chair, Technology Committee), and is a former President (1994) of the Aurora Bar Association.  He is an A-V ranked lawyer by Martindale-Hubbell and is listed in the Bar Register of Preeminent Lawyers.

Mr. Murray has a long-standing interest in the litigation and appeal of interstate and international custody issues, high conflict domestic relations litigation, military service divorce-related issues, family law/criminal law related matters, and attorney ethics issues arising from family law matters. He has presented more than forty  continuing legal education (CLE) programs to attorneys from Colorado, and elsewhere, including programs on a variety of family law issues, the tension and interplay between family law and criminal law issues, various programs on Internet and technology issues, and over one dozen presentations on various topics in legal ethics. Russel has presented a regular series of programs on issues relating to interstate custody matters involving the Parental Kidnapping Prevention Act (PKPA), the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction Act (UCCJA), and the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction Enforcement Act (UCCJEA) and has spoken on issues attendant to the interstate enforcement of restraining orders and the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA).  Mr. Murray has presented at the Colorado State Judicial Conference on the topic of transforming the custody decision process, on issues relating to the use (and abuse) of temporary restraining orders in domestic relations litigation, and has spoken and taught on matters relating to effective courtroom communication skills.  He speaks regularly for CLECI (Continuing Legal Education in Colorado, Inc.), CLEI (Continuing Legal Education International, Inc.), LEI (Lorman Education Institute, Inc.), and with back-to-back annual programs in 1999 and 2000, closed the old and brought in the new millenniums by speaking on the topic of Interstate Custody at the Millennium: The PKPA, UCCJA, and UCCJEA, in Vail, Colorado, for the Law Education Institute, the annual January CLE presented and hosted by James and Peggy Podell.

Mr. Murray is admitted to practice before the United States Supreme Court, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, the United States District Court of Colorado, and all Courts of the State of Colorado, including the Colorado Supreme Court and the Colorado Court of Appeals.  He is a former elected member of the board of directors of the Metropolitan Denver Interdisciplinary Committee On Child Custody (MDICCC)(now known as MDIC), for which he also developed and chaired the Interdisciplinary Ethics and Professionalism and Internet and Technology Committees.  Mr. Murray serves as a member of the advisory board of directors of Parenting After Divorce - Denver (PADD).

In 2001, Mr. Murray Co-Chaired (with Dana Cogan, M.D.) the 1st Family Law Institute at Breckenridge, Colorado, the millennium update of a conference with a then twenty-five year year history (under a different name, as noted below) of providing the unique setting and environment in which many of Colorado and the nation's most noted individuals and entities from the disciplines of law and mental health gather for a weekend conference and retreat during which the entire group focuses on issues surrounding the best interests of children in divorce proceedings, and on matters concerning child custody (in Colorado, custody is now known as the allocation of parental responsibilities, including primary residence and decision-making authority), as well as on the world of issues which may arise in any domestic relations matter, including divisions and distributions of property and debt, maintenance (alimony), tax matters, enforcement issues, and many others.  In 1994, Mr. Murray also Co-Chaired the 18th annual event, then known as the Annual Child Custody Conference at Breckenridge, Colorado.

Mr. Murray authored "Interstate Custody At The Millennium" for The American Journal of Family Law (Fall, 1999), and is preparing a chapter on Family Law Ethics for CLECI (initially to have been the family law ethics chapter in the Inaugural Edition of the West Publishing, Colorado Family Law Practice Guide, a tomb which ultimately was not published).  In addition, he has authored various interstate custody, ethics, and Internet and technology columns for the newsletters of the Colorado Bar Association Family Law Section and previously wrote a regular column entitled "Lawyers, The Law, and The Internet" for WebBound Magazine, a quarterly international compendium of web addresses with a current readership in excess of 200,000.  Mr. Murray has been actively involved in the Denver Internet Chamber of Commerce and the Northern Colorado Internet Chamber of Commerce, and has spoken on topics relating to Internet Law and Internet Legal Ethics issues, including his presentation of "Ethical Issues In Financing High Tech Companies," in October, 2000.  As a former member of the LawyerNet ISP family, Russel was selected as the LawyerNet Member of the Month for May, 1998.  Further, he is a regular presenter at various CLE (Continuing Legal Education) seminars on issues relating to the Internet, and on legal ethics issues arising from the same.