February 21, 2007
By Milt Capps, Editor, Nashville Attorney
Ferber Tracy, who has been with Chattanooga's Spears, Moore, Rebman & Williams for 40 years, is the new chairman of Tennessee's Board of Professional Responsibility. Although the BPR has recently made strong gains in national rankings of the states' lawyer-discipline programs, a recent report card inevitably revealed areas needing improvement.
The 2006 rating of lawyer discipline by HALT Americans for Legal Reform gave Tennessee a "C+," overall; and, an A on Fairness, a D on adequacy of discipline and an F on public participation (non-lawyers are not allowed to participate in hearings in the Volunteer State).
BPR Executive Director Lancy Bracey told NATTY that remedying that F would require legislative changes, to allow greater public participation. The legislative fix has been used before: It was largely because the Tennessee Supreme Court discarded the gag rule three years ago - freeing the public to complain publicly about lawyers - that Tennessee's HALT ranking rose from 30th in 2004, to 4th in the nation in 2006.
Ferber told NATTY he believes Tennessee's strengths in the rankings are a result of many initiatives taken over the years and now coming to fruit.
Indeed, HALT Senior Counsel Suzanne Blonder told NATTY Jan. 29 that Tennessee did "remarkably well" on the HALT's most recent survey of lawyer discipline systems.
However, she noted that in the context of HALT's rating of "adequacy of discipline imposed," Tennessee's BPR was shown to have meted-out discipline privately, too often, rather than imposing sanctions formally and in full public view.
Said Blonder, "Less than 5 percent [of discipline matters that] were investigated by [Tennessee's BPR] resulted in formal public sanctions. An additional 8 percent resulted in private sanctions. Our view is that all discipline should be formal," she explained, adding that all sanctions should be "matter of public record," so that consumers are well informed.
"Our real concern for Tennessee is its reliance on private closed-door discipline, which is outnumbering formal public discipline by 2 to 1," she added. Bonder said HALT's data are here (charts I and II were used in figuring adequacy of discipline).
Blonder said that later this year HALT plans to release its study on fee arbitration initiatives within the states. There's also a HALT report in the works on how states remove unethical judges from the bench.
BPR's rules and most recent annual report. Latest BPR actions against attorneys.
© 2007, Nashville Attorney
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