The grievance that Linda Sarofim Lowe of Houston filed in 1998 against her two divorce attorneys, Earle S. Lilly and Robert J. Piro, lingered in the system for five years before the State Bar actually filed its disciplinary suit, which was resolved in November with each attorney agreeing to a public reprimand. Lowe died in mountain-climbing accident in 2000.

And a disciplinary suit against Dallas solo Catherine Shelton filed in 2001 languished for three years before the case settled earlier this month. Shelton agreed to a three-month active license suspension and three years' probation; Austin's 250th District Judge John Dietz issued a judgment of suspension on Dec. 8.

The length of time it took to resolve Commission for Lawyer Discipline v. Earle S. Lilly and Robert J. Piro and Commission for Lawyer Discipline v. Catherine Shelton are examples of problems with the attorney discipline system in Texas and nationwide, says James C. Turner, executive director of HALT Inc., a nonprofit legal reform group.

"Unfortunately the pattern for attorney discipline is 'justice delayed is justice denied' and it's a nationwide pattern," Turner says.

The Texas Rules of Disciplinary Procedure say that a court "shall set each disciplinary action to commence the trial no later than 180 days after the date the disciplinary petition is filed with the district clerk. No motion for continuance, resetting or agreed pass may be granted unless required by the interests of justice." But another disciplinary rule essentially makes that deadline irrelevant, stating that the time restriction is not mandatory.

That's the problem with the sometimes-pokey attorney discipline system in Texas, Turner says. Delays in trying disciplinary cases can result in harm to clients the lawyer continues to represent, Turner says. And procedural delays prolong the potential exoneration of a lawyer who may have done nothing wrong.

"The real solution is real deadlines that are enforced," Turner says. "And having all of the good intentions in the world doesn't mean anything if you don't enforce them."

But setting a mandatory deadline for trying discipline suits has a serious downside, says Dawn Miller, chief disciplinary counsel for the State Bar of Texas. It's possible that if the deadline passes - for whatever reason - the Bar may lose its only chance to try the case, she says.

"There's no explanation anyone will ever have as to why that case was left unattended," says Angleton solo Michael Phillips, who represented Lowe in pursuing the grievance and in a civil suit against the divorce attorneys, partners in Houston's Piro & Lilly. Phillips contends that the State Bar has resolved grievances against many other attorneys in a much shorter time.

In May 1999, a State Bar Grievance Commit-tee in Houston found just cause for disciplinary action against Piro and Lilly for collecting an "illegal or unconscionable fee" from Lowe for their work on her 1996 divorce from billionaire financier Fayez Sarofim.

The Commission for Lawyer Discipline [CLD] alleged in its petition, filed in May in Houston's 125th District Court, that Piro and Lilly collected as a contingent fee $5.7 million of the initial $12 million payment that Lowe receive from Sarofim - part of more than $45 million that Piro and Lilly say they recovered for Lowe by successfully challenging a prenuptial agreement that entitled her to only $6 million.

The disciplinary proceeding was on hold while Lowe's civil suit against her divorce lawyers, Lowe v. Piro, et al., wound its way through the judicial system. A 295th District Court jury found in November 1999 that Piro and Lilly breached their fiduciary duty to Lowe and awarded her $3 million in actual damages and an additional $3 million in forfeited attorneys' fees.

Judge Tracy Christopher, who presided over the civil trial, reduced the amount to $3 million, alternatively based on fiduciary duty or fee forfeiture, in the final judgment issued in 2000. After the 1st Court of Appeals in Houston upheld Christopher's judgment in April 2002, Sarofim settled the civil suit with Lilly and Piro for an undisclosed amount.

Mark White, CLD chairman and a shareholder in Amarillo's Sprouse Schrader Smith in Amarillo, says the length of time that it took to resolve the grievance was the result of monitoring the underlying civil litigation and lengthy negotiations with Piro and Lilly. [See "Grievance Ends With Public Reprimands," Texas Lawyer, Nov. 10, 2003, page 1.]

But Phillips contends that there was "no reason" for the CLD to wait until the appellate process ended in the civil suit. He says the CLD should have addressed the grievance after Christopher signed the judgment and issued findings in the civil suit.

"If Earl [Lilly] and I had wanted to rush the case along, push it along, we could have done that," Piro says.

But Piro says he and Lilly thought that if the case continued over a long period, someone would say that the grievance was without merit. Piro contends that he and Lilly are the victims of the grievance system.

"The fact that lawyers developed the system to discipline their own is laughable," he says. "It is not a fair process."

Piro says he and Lilly agreed to accept a public reprimand for failing to provide Lowe with a written statement that described the outcome of her divorce case. The disciplinary system "forces people to make pleas because they don't want to incur the expense and notoriety of going to trial," he argues. Both Piro and Lilly contend they did nothing wrong in their representation of Lowe in her divorce case or in the charging of the contingent fee.

Jim McCormack, a former general counsel and chief disciplinary counsel for the State Bar, says he believes that the Office of Chief Disciplinary Counsel negotiated for too long with Lilly and Piro. McCormack, a partner in Austin's Tomblin Carnes McCormack, contends that the lengthy delay brought things to a "point at which everybody just wanted to flush it." But cases like that are exceptional and aren't representative of the grievance system, he says.

"Exceptional cases with high-profile folks put a lot of stresses on the system," McCormack says. "Those cases tend to be bitterly fought, well lawyered and very expensive," he says.

But such cases can bring about changes in the disciplinary system, McCormack says, adding that he would like to see the Bar tighten deadlines in the grievance process. He advocates setting stricter limits on the time for negotiating and the time for filing disciplinary suits and bringing them to trial.

Under Rule 3.01 of the proposed new Texas Rules for Disciplinary Procedure, which are pending before the state Supreme Court, the chief disciplinary counsel must file a petition in a state district court within 60 days after an attorney elects to have a grievance heard by a court, Miller says.

But Miller says she doesn't think there should be any deadline for negotiating a disciplinary case. "That's something that should occur at any time," she says.

In the CLD's petition in Commission for Lawyer Discipline v. Catherine Shelton, the CLD alleged that Shelton agreed to represent numerous clients in immigration matters but she was "not experienced in immigration matters and not competent to handle such cases." The commission also alleged that Shelton charged "unconscionable fees" to those clients and "performed no legal services" for some of them.

Shelton and her attorneys did not return calls for comment. But Steven L. Lee, a partner in Austin's Lione & Lee, told Texas Lawyer in 2001 that problems with Shelton's immigration cases were caused by inadequate work done by Shelton's paralegals.

The resolution of Shelton's case was delayed numerous times due to the recusal of the first judge assigned to the case; scheduling conflicts with the second judge assigned to the case; and two motions in which she claimed she was too sick to go to trial. [See "Catherine Shelton, Lawyer Discipline Commission Settle," Texas Lawyer, Dec. 15, 2003, page 1.]

"It is regrettable that it took that long," Miller says of Shelton's case. "But there were a lot of reasons that it took that long, not the least of which is the number of complainants that it involved."

Shelton also is required by the terms of her judgment of suspension to pay $34,835 in restitution to 21 of her former clients.

The attorney discipline system may be quick for lesser-known lawyers. But it is the high-profile cases that the public sees, which result in the erosion of confidence in the system, Turner says. The system needs to be equally swift for big-time and unknown attorneys, he says.

Slow justice for a big fish is a sign of problems with the attorney discipline system, Turner says.

"That isn't equal justice," he adds. "And that isn't the way the system is supposed to work."