Point & Glick

Much has been said about Rachel Rodgers’ rant about older attor­neys sup­pos­edly using ethics as a weapon against younger attorneys.

I’ll be hon­est, I’m not entirely sure what her point was, but I can totally under­stand some­one want­ing to write just to blow off steam. Although it might be a good idea to wait until you calm down before post­ing it; but that’s another issue, entirely.

I’m not here to decide whether she is vio­lat­ing any ethics rules, even though she is. My rea­son for writ­ing about this is that I took a few min­utes yes­ter­day to peruse my state’s Attor­ney Griev­ance Com­mis­sion web­site. Listed are the names of sanc­tioned attor­neys next to the sanc­tions against them and the rea­son for the sanc­tions.
There are a lot of names. Sev­eral names appear mul­ti­ple times over the course of a few years.
Some sanc­tions are for crim­i­nal con­duct, but a large amount are sanc­tions against young attor­neys who screwed up the fun­da­men­tal aspects of prac­tic­ing law.

Trust accounts. Com­pe­tence. Timely fil­ing. Com­mu­ni­ca­tion with a client.

A slightly smaller num­ber of attor­neys are sanc­tioned for fail­ure to sat­is­fac­to­rily super­vise junior asso­ciates. That tells me that those junior asso­ciates would have been sanc­tioned had they been going solo, with­out the super­vis­ing attor­ney as a safety net. The issues were the same — fun­da­men­tal tenets of the prac­tice of law.

Is it wrong for an older attor­ney to use ethics as a weapon against younger attor­neys? If by that you mean to beat some­body with a bound Rules of Pro­fes­sional Respon­si­bilty, then yes.
If you mean to increase aware­ness of the poten­tial pit­falls for a newly barred attor­ney going solo, then no.