Ethics problem: Former Texas prosecutor disbarred for creating false testimony.

A former prosecutor who used false testimony and withheld evidence to send a now-exonerated man to Texas' death row has lost an appeal to overturn his disbarment.

The Dallas Morning News ( http://bit.ly/1TPB1fq ) reports that the Board of Disciplinary Appeals on Monday upheld the decision of the State Bar of Texas to disbar Charles Sebesta. The board's decision is final.

In case you were wondering, yeah, it's illegal, and even more: prosecutors are supposed to held to a higher standard as they often have access to information that others do not. 

Lawyer disbarred for recording clients for his own amusement (Oh, and he appropriated clients' funds too)

According to the opinion, Steele had taken virtually all of the funds in the client trust account, making it difficult to return unearned fees. When a client requested the money, Steele told his staff to inflate the client’s legal bills to deplete the retainer. Sometimes, Steele returned fees with retainers paid by new clients.

Steele also recorded conversations of clients and potential clients for his own personal amusement, and shared those recordings with staffers and relatives. He “openly mocked” the recorded individuals in conversations with others and in a meeting with the state disciplinary commission.

Article here (via aba journal). 

Detroit -area attorney charged with mortgage fraud scheme

Steven Barry Ruza, 52, of Orchard Lake and his company, Home Legal Group, promised upwards of 114 victims they could obtain mortgage modifications and save their homes from foreclosure but then did nothing, or very little, to obtain mortgage modifications for the victims, Schuette's office said. They did, however, collect hundreds of thousands in fees.

 Article here. 

Failure to pay child support can result in disbarment, says Kentucky Supreme Court

Kentucky Supreme Court says a lawyer can be disbarred for non-payment of child support.

Article here (via aba journal).

Note that the lawyer had faced disciplinary action before for mishandling of client funds, and failure to place funds in an escrow account.

From the article:

James was suspended from law practice for five years in a different ethics case in April 2013. His misconduct included failure to return unearned fees, failing to place client fees in an escrow account, charging unreasonable fees for copying case files, and misappropriating a client’s money, according to the Kentucky Supreme Court opinion. At that time, James said his conduct was because of his discontinuation of medication for a mental health condition and promised to seek treatment through the Kentucky Lawyer Assistance Program.

The Kentucky Supreme Court noted James’ disciplinary history and his failure to respond to the current ethics charges. The court also said failure to pay child support is a breach of attorney duties to follow a court order, to comply with a statutory obligation, and to conduct oneself in a way that is above reproach.

In the "should've known better department": Lawyer suspended for using disbarred lawyer as co-counsel

It's called "unauthorized practice of law." State bar associations go after this heavily - and it's illegal when a lawyer does it, or helps another lawyer to do it.

Article here. (aba journal).

A solo practitioner in New York state has been suspended for two years because he hired a disbarred lawyer, an old law school friend, as a paralegal and then gave the friend great autonomy.

Dean Gary Weber of Westbury, New York, was suspended for two years for assisting a nonlawyer in the practice of law, the New York Law Journal reports. The Legal Profession Blog quoted from the Jan. 28 opinion imposing the suspension by the New York Appellate Division, Second Department.

It's unethical for prosecutors to lend letterhead to bill collectors, says ABA opinion

District attorneys should not contract out their letterhead to private debt collection companies, who then use that official letterhead to scare consumers into paying debts.

ABA Formal Ethics Opinion 469 (PDF) explains that this practice violates ABA Model Rules against lawyer conduct involving dishonesty or misrepresentation and aiding or assisting others in the unauthorized practice of law.

Article here (via aba journal). 

Elder law attorney accused of stealing from clients and estates pleads guilty, forfeits $3M

A New Jersey attorney known for her elder law expertise has pleaded guilty to money laundering.concerning a scheme that allegedly stripped senior clients and some of their estates of millions of dollars.

Barbara Lieberman, 62, also agreed to give up her law license, some $3 million in frozen assets and a BMW in her Monday plea in the Atlantic County Superior Court case, New Jersey Lawyer (sub. req.) and the Philadelphia Inquirer report.

Article here. 

Former Zeeland attorney spent almost all $900,000 of missing client funds

Of the $900,000 that former Zeeland attorney Kenneth Hoesch took from clients’ estate trusts, only a relative pittance has been found.

He had $2,065.57 in a client trust account at Macatawa Bank and had a coin collection, appraised at $3,388, in a safety-deposit box at Huntington Bank in Zeeland.

Article here. (via mlive.com)

IRS Ethics lawyer facing possible disbarrment over lying

You'd think a PR attorney would know better than to lie when facing a panel. But apparently not.

Article here. (via taxprof blog).

A lawyer in the IRS ethics office is facing the possibility of being disbarred, according to records that accuse her of lying to a court-appointed board and hiding what she’d done with money from a settlement that was supposed to go to two medical providers who had treated her client.

The disciplinary arm of the D.C. Court of Appeals has recommended that Takisha McGee, a section manager in the IRS Office of Professional Responsibility, lose her law license over the charge, which stems from a personal injury case she worked about a year before she joined the tax agency.

Professional Etiquette, rule number two: don't call the judge names. Attorney gets $1000 fine.

GRAND RAPIDS, MI – A Plainfield Township attorney was fined $1,000 for writing that Kent County Circuit Court judge Christopher Yates was acting "as the bitch" for one side in a contentious lawsuit.

Article here. 

One way to pick a jury (unethically)

Without the Court’s permission, and without telling plaintiff what it was planning to do, [the defendant] had its lawyer quietly enter the room with the veniremen, unannounced, alone among all counsel in the case. Notepad in hand, the [the defendant's] lawyer remained in the jury room watching and critiquing the veniremen for 90 minutes, while they assembled, interacted, and filled out the jury questionnaire. The lawyer only left after court personnel found out she was present, identified her as a lawyer with no business being there, and told her to leave.

article here. 

Multi- state bar admissions: You can't fool the bar

Here's an interesting report on a case of a lawyer moving from one state to another in pursuit of bar admission but failing to make required disclosures in both jurisdictions.

From the state bar of Michigan blog. 

Legal advice for lawyers: If you win a massive fee, don't put it in an illegal tax shelter

This all started when a big tobacco company was sued through the office of Nix, Patterson and Roach. In 1998, the attorneys won $600 million in attorneys’ fees, to be paid over a period of time, as well as $68 million in connection with tobacco litigation in other states.
With this money in hand, the partners sought ways to shelter themselves from tax liability, and formed a partnership, NPR Investments, to invest in foreign currency.  . . .

The 5th Circuit found Thursday that the partnership and partners must pay penalties for underpaying the Internal Revenue Service through this investment scheme.
Pursuant to the Supreme Court’s recent decision in U.S. v. Woods, NPR is subject to a 40 percent gross valuation misstatement penalty.

Article here (via Above the Law).

Is there life after being disbarred? This article says there is.

The Louisville Courier-Journal covers how several former Kentucky lawyers are living their lives post-disbarment. (Kentucky is a rare "license death penalty" jurisdiction that does not allow disbarred lawyers to ever apply for reinstatement.)

Article here. 

Are Florida's advertising restrictions so overbroad that Abe Lincoln would have violated them?

State Bar associations get to write the rules as to how attorneys can advertise in that state. Some states are more restrictive than others. Florida is known for having a rather strict State Bar. And it's advertising rules are currently the subject of a lawsuit.

Article here. 

The plaintiffs (a law firm)

"complain that for decades the Florida Bar has "stood apart from the rest of the nation in the restrictiveness of its rules governing lawyer advertising," but  that now, well, they've really just gone too far . . .Indeed, Florida’s rules are so broad that they would have subjected Abraham Lincoln to discipline for stating, in an 1852 newspaper advertisement, that his firm handled business with “promptness and fidelity”—two words that are no more “objectively verifiable” than those the Bar concludes violate its ethics rules here.

Does your law practice need updating? Technology concerns?

Do you have a tendency to be slow to change your ways? Have you resisted changing due to technological issues? It's not just a quaint thing, for lawyers to resist change & act in Luddite-like ways: instead, it's possible that a lawyer who fails to change due to technology could be facing ethical violations.

Article here. 

What does the prosecution have to share with defendants?

According to the rules of professional conduct, prosecutors have an ethical duty to share information with the defendant that might possibly be exculpatory - in other words, the evidence could prove that the defendant didn't do the charged crime.
But apparently this is news to prosecutors in North Carolina, who are defending their decision not to turn over exculpatory evidence for a man who spent 17 years in prison. Article here.