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HALT's 2002 Lawyer Discipline Report Card, the first comprehensive evaluation of the legal establishment's system of self-regulation in ten years, is a scathing indictment of attorney discipline agencies nationwide. Of the fifty-one jurisdictions surveyed, thirty-nine states received grades below C. Two states - Pennsylvania and North Carolina - flunked outright. No state earned an A.
"To protect the public from unscrupulous, negligent or incompetent attorneys, penalties for misconduct should be swift and certain," stated HALT Executive Director James C. Turner. "Instead, the Lawyer Discipline Report Card found a wide pattern of delay, secrecy and toothless sanctions that amount to a national disgrace."
HALT produced the Lawyer Discipline Report Card to assess whether states have taken any meaningful action to ameliorate the lawyer discipline system since 1992, when an American Bar Association commission declared the system "too slow, too secret, too soft, and too self-regulated." The ABA study followed an earlier 1970 blue ribbon panel led by Supreme Court Justice Tom Clark that found the lawyer discipline was in a "scandalous situation" and required "the immediate attention of the public."
"Despite decades of calls for reform, the attorney discipline system is still badly broken," explained Turner. "Our Lawyer Discipline Report Card found in state after state, the vast majority of consumer complaints are not even investigated or are dismissed on technicalities, while only a handful lead to more than a slap on the wrist. Unscrupulous or incompetent lawyers should be held accountable to the clients they victimize, but the current system fails to do so."
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