More on Legal Ethics
Earlier this year the Missouri Bar Journal ran an extended article on the new ethics rule. It hit a nerve for me because we lawyers are mandated to take ethics courses each year on the most esoteric situations when the principles of legal ethics are really quite simple. Also, as I have written before, one apparently can do many questionable things before being disbarred-see my post of March ---about Larry Fleming!
My response to the article was publishedin this month’s issue:
I read with interest Chief Disciplinary Counsel Laura E. Elsbury’s article on new Rule 5 in the most recent issue of the Journal. I am in the twilight of my career and am once again flustered by the form over substance attitude of The Missouri Bar on ethical issues. We lawyers are mandated to take courses in ethics that deal with some of the most trivial issues when virtually all such matters can be resolved by simply not disclosing a client’s conversations and not taking adverse position to a client. What really gripes me is the bar’s lax attitude to the few crooks among us. Several years ago, I became aware of a lawyer who had muscled his way into handling the finances of an elderly couple. One child (a friend and not a client of mine), who was a contingent beneficiary, tried to get information when her parents indicated they never received statements or even 1099 forms. As a bankruptcy lawyer, it was overwhelmingly obvious after hearing what they did know that the subject lawyer was using the funds improperly. The child filed suit and filed an ethics complaint. Shockingly, the bar indicated it would defer the complaint until the litigation ended. In the meantime, he stole even more. (And who knows what he was doing with other clients.) That, of course, took several years and resulted in a removal of the lawyer and a judgment for $325,000 against him even though it was clear he had taken more. It just wasn’t worth trying to prove more because it was clear he couldn’t pay the $325,000. Even then it took the bar many months to finally disbar him. When the music in the circuit court stopped, the bar held a hearing and recommended disbarment — the lawyer asked to be merely suspended — but of course nothing happened until the matter still labored through the system like a modern-day Jarndyce v. Jarndyce. I wrote the members of the Supreme Court after he was finally disbarred and suggested that the rules be changed so that in the event a lawyer was suspected of similar actions there would at least be a preliminary hearing and opportunity to suspend him or her. I received no response. I suggest that the Disciplinary Counsel, instead of telling we lawyers what 99% of us already know, do something to get the crooks out of our profession.
I am sure my suggestion will again fall on deaf ears to the blind justices! Then again perhaps the Missouri Bar can convince the nine United States Supreme Court Justices to take ethics courses.