Connecticut's system of disciplining lawyers ranks among the top four nationwide, although its overall grade of "C" leaves that system open to "significant improvement," according to a legal consumer group.

HALT, a Washington, D.C.-based organization advocating legal reforms, said court systems and agencies responsible for prosecuting lawyers for ethical lapses are weak nationwide. Of the 51 jurisdictions surveyed by HALT, 39 states received grades below C. Two states -- North Carolina and Pennsylvania -- flunked. Massachusetts ranked highest, with a B-minus.

HALT gave Connecticut's Statewide Grievance Committee a high ranking because the agency's most recent statistics showed 17 percent of the cases it investigated led to sanctions against misconduct by lawyers, significantly higher than approximately 3.5 percent nationwide. Sanctions range from the very rare disbarment to temporary suspensions or to reprimands, the most frequent penalty.

"Connecticut leads the way, but the numbers still fall short of where they need to be in order to serve as an effective deterrent against unethical and incompetent lawyering," said Suzanne M. Mishkin, HALT's associate counsel and director of the Lawyer Accountability Project.

Local disciplinary committees in the state's 13 judicial districts throw out many of Connecticut's complaints against lawyers before they are exposed to a state agency inquiry, according to state records. The local committees are composed of volunteers, while the statewide agency has eight full-time lawyer-counsels and one investigator. It also has a lawyer and an investigator specifically scrutinizing funds lawyers retain for their clients.

Local consumer complaints about Connecticut's lawyer disciplinary system in the 1990s led to a special oversight commission inquiry. More than a year ago, that commission submitted a list of 10 proposed changes to the system, since approved by the state's judges and set for implementation July 1.

HALT said the statewide committee does not keep records for the public to show how long it takes the agency to bring complaints or impose sanctions. The long delays in getting complaints resolved was one critical area the special commission debated.

"During our inquiry, we found the [lawyer grievance] system seriously deficient," said senior Supreme Court Justice Robert I. Berdon, the commission's chairman. "That's why we made those sweeping changes."

Daniel B. Horwitch, the statewide grievance counsel, declined comment on the HALT report.

The organization criticized the Statewide Grievance Committee's Internet site, saying the public could not easily find it through a standard Internet search. Once HALT found the site, however, it lauded the quality of the information found there.

The reform group praised the state's grievance agency for giving helpful information about the lawyer disciplinary system in its brochure for the public.

HALT's inquiry was conducted between May and September 2002. The inquiry was attempting to find out what action states nationwide have taken to improve their lawyer discipline systems since 1992. That was when an American Bar Association commission declared the system "too slow, too secret, too soft, and too self-regulated," said HALT's report.

"Despite decades of calls for reform, the [nation's] attorney discipline system is still badly broken," stated HALT Executive Director James C. Turner.

HALT called each state's disciplinary agency, reviewed their Internet sites, brochures and annual report of each agency, analyzed data compiled by the American Bar Association Survey on Lawyer Discipline, and assessed the rules and regulations governing each state disciplinary agency.

Founded in 1978, HALT is the oldest and largest consumer legal reform group in the U.S., with 50,000 members. A copy of the Lawyer Discipline Report Card and a Summary of Findings is available from HALT upon request and at www.halt.org. To download a form to file a complaint against a Connecticut lawyer go to http://www.jud.state.ct.us/external/super/forms.htm#GRIEVANCE.

Report Card HALT'S Lawyer Discipline Report Card On Connecticut
Overall Grade:	C
Adequacy of Discipline Imposed:	C+
Publicity and Responsiveness:	B-
Openness of Process:	C+
Fairness of Disciplinary Procedures:	C
Public Participation in disciplinary committees:	C
Promptness of follow-up on grievance complaints:	Incomplete (no data available)
Grade scale is A (best) to F (failure).