Pennsylvania citizens owe a debt of gratitude to Chris Osher and Brad Bumsted for their extensive investigative report exposing the failure of the Pennsylvania lawyer discipline system (“Pa. keeps lawyer discipline secret,” Dec.1).

HALT’s 2002 Lawyer Discipline Report Card gave Pennsylvania an F, and rated it as worst in the nation, because its discipline system suffers from pervasive defects in addition to excessive secrecy.

Unlike the vast majority of states, there is not even token layperson representation on Pennsylvania hearing panels – instead, only lawyers decide if and when to impose sanctions upon their colleagues.

Remarkably, former Pennsylvania disciplinary official James Schwartzman tries to defend the most secretive system in the nation by arguing that it protects attorneys from “irreparable harm.” In reality, it’s Pennsylvania consumers who are the victims of a system marked by toothless sanctions, unnecessary secrecy, biased procedures and missing statistics.

Unfortunately, Pennsylvania’s problems are not unique. The failure of the attorney discipline system to protect consumers is a nationwide problem. There is a continuing pattern of laxity, secrecy and delay, which is why no state received an A and only one state received a B in our Report Card.

The consensus among disciplinary officials, consumers and scholars, is that the Pennsylvania lawyer discipline system requires urgent and substantial improvements. Rather than reflexively defending a broken system, as Schwartzman does, responsible lawyers should publicly recognize the system’s defects and work toward securing meaningful reforms.