January 22, 2007
By Jennifer Clifford, Law Week Colorado
DENVER - Colorado ranked 2nd in the nation on a nonpartisan legal group's 2006 lawyer discipline report card, being one of only three states to receive the high score of a mere B-minus. But the Colorado Attorney Regulation Counsel does not view the ranking with high regard.
Despite the high overall ranking in the 2006 report, the Washington, D.C.-based group HALT-An Organization of Americans for Legal Reform, found that Colorado "failed to investigate more than 86 percent of the complaints received against lawyers," which merited a D-minus rating in the category of Adequacy of Discipline Imposed, one of six by which it evaluates disciplinary systems.
The other five categories of evaluation, in order of importance, are: Publicity and Responsiveness, Openness of the Process, Fairness of Disciplinary Procedures, Public Participation and Promptness. An overall grade is reached by averaging these six categories.
Since HALT found that so few complaints in Colorado were investigated, HALT Senior Counsel Suzanne Blonder said, "It sends the message to people in the state that their complaints are being ignored." She recommended that Colorado strive to investigate a greater percentage of claims filed.
But John Gleason of Colorado's Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel disagrees. "I don't think they do their job," he said. "They send out some inflammatory report that is no more accurate than something from The National Enquirer." He is critical of the D.C.-based organization, whose acronym once stood for "Help Abolish Legal Tyranny."
Gleason said Colorado is one of the only states in the nation to receive all complaints over the phone with paperwork unnecessary. Coupled with a database system that catalogues each claim, the system allows more complaints to be filed with easier access for those in the community who wish to file grievances.
"What HALT fails to recognize is that, because of the way we take complaints, we're going to get more complaints," Gleason said. This inevitably leads to inaccurate statistics when comparing to other states, he said.
But most importantly, "every case is investigated," he said. "They think we get this call and it goes into some black hole somewhere." But that is not the case, he said, because every complaint received over the telephone is logged into a database and is then reviewed by a lawyer within 10 days to be determined if it will be dismissed or fully investigated.
The initial review by a lawyer is the key step ignored by the HALT findings, Gleason said. Even though the case may be dismissed, it was not dismissed without some preliminary investigation, which is often necessary to eliminate erroneous claims. But as the numbers speak, the case was dismissed without regard.
Colorado's intake system was heralded by HALT, which is one reason the state was ranked second despite the law levels of discipline imposed. HALT noted in Colorado's 2006 report card that the state has one of the "best, most easily navigable attorney discipline Web sites in the country" and is "one of the only disciplinary bodies in the nation to accept grievances over the telephone" and "accommodate non-English speakers."
Blonder said, "I do want to indicate that, in most respects, we were quite pleased. Colorado had a very positive evaluation. Colorado is a good model for other states." But she didn't want to dismiss the importance of the evaluations.
"Our report cards provide an important tool for lawyer discipline systems," Blonder said. They provide "an outside perspective of the systems' oversight. For consumers, they provide some insight into a system that was once closed to the public. We give them a window into that closed-door system."
In light of the recent media frenzy over the public censure of District Attorney Carol Chambers and talk of scandalous sticky notes being passed in courtrooms, it may seem that more doors need to be opened and a greater criticism is amounting from the often light discipline imposed - if any. A survey conducted by the American Bar Association in 2005 found that only 353 complains out of nearly 4,000 in Colorado were fully investigated beyond the preliminary investigations that Gleason mentioned. Of those investigated, only 54 cases resulted in discipline. '
But of those some 90 percent of cases dismissed, all were given the opportunity to file their complaint and speak their mind even if they didn't have a legitimate complaint, Gleason said.
© 2007, Law Week Colorado
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