The Morning Call - March 19, 2006
By Paul Carpenter
Nothing could be more surprising than to learn that Pennsylvania's legal establishment actually has taken steps to improve its system for disciplining unscrupulous lawyers.
In 2002, the Americans for Legal Reform organization evaluated all 50 states and Washington, D.C., on lawyer malpractice and discipline.
Pennsylvania came in 51st.
ALR's 2006 report elevates Pennsylvania from dead last to fifth place. In the main, the state's legal establishment is still a scandal of dreadful proportions, but we cannot deny that improvements were made in the lawyer discipline system, which is handled by the Disciplinary Board of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.
That court is a scandal all by itself, but the ALR evaluations use a narrow set of criteria to reflect how well the lawyer disciplinary system works. The six categories are the adequacy of discipline imposed on lawyers, publicity and responsiveness, openness of the process, fairness, public participation and promptness.
The state still gets dismal marks for adequacy (only a tiny percentage of lawyers accused of wrongdoing are actually punished), but changes made by the Disciplinary Board in three categories - publicity, openness and fairness - caused the state's grade point average to soar.
"Pennsylvania takes the nation's top honors for 'Most Improved,' based on its meteoric rise from worst in the nation four years ago to fifth in the nation today," said a press release from HALT, a segment of the ALR organization.
HALT Associate Counsel Suzanne Blonder told me the key improvements included a new Web site and less secrecy. After the Disciplinary Board was harshly criticized following the 2002 report, she noted, its staffers worked with HALT to "institute meaningful reforms."
At the same time, Blonder denounced remaining problems, such as the board's refusal to let anyone but lawyers sit on the panels that determine whether complaints against fellow lawyers are valid. "If a jury of ordinary laypersons can decide murder trials and multimillion dollar civil cases," she said, "then we can certainly entrust nonlawyers to determine whether a lawyer has committed misconduct."
Nevertheless, the Disciplinary Board, which had little to say about the 2002 report, made happy noises about the new report, and exultantly scheduled a press conference in Harrisburg for Thursday.
Only a handful of journalists showed up, however, and some pulled out before the briefing began. When the board people saw there were only a few people still there - and one of them (me) has a bad reputation for bashing lawyers - they canceled it.
(I need to divert some of the lawyer-bashing blame - or credit - to Tom Bonekemper of Quakertown, who is both a lawyer and a physician, in addition to being a crusader for reform. He gave me many tips and helped me understand just how corrupt Pennsylvania's legal establishment is.)
Anyway, the only paper I could find that did a story on this sensational event was the Pennsylvania Law Weekly.
My Harrisburg trip was not wasted; I did get the board's media kit on its new status.
"We appreciate the national recognition," said a statement by board Chairman Marvin Rudnitsky. "This dramatic improvement is a direct result of a concerted effort by our board to make systemic changes to provide better information to attorneys who practice law in this state, as well as initiate a more open and accessible system to citizens who need and deserve the highest level of legal services."
I also talked to Rudnitsky, but I'm out of space. I'll tell you about that - and about a few legal establishment problems the ALR evaluations do not cover - some other time.
paul.carpenter@mcall.com 610-820-6176
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