ABA sanctions: Useful or "@#!!%" ?

Is the American Bar Association's annual survey of lawyer sanctions potentially useful to attorneys or "crap"? Yesterday, Bob Ambrogi blogged that in 2003 there were 119,863 complaints against attorneys, of which 6,220 resulted in sanctions (a little more than half were public, the rest were private).

Blogger Norm Pattis is not impressed. In a post titled, "A Tidal Wave of Crap," Pattis suggests that it's time for attorneys to defend themselves against frivolous claims (Ambrogi reports that 62,000 were dismissed because the agency lacked jurisdiction or the complaint lacked facts constituting professional misconduct). Here's an excerpt from Pattis' lengthy post:

"Here's news that won't surprise those with a decade or more at the bar: Slightly more than 50 percent of complaints were dismissed summarily as so totally lacking in merit that they did not pass the straight-face test. Why not a call for sanctions against those who file frivolous complaints? In almost every other context, a litigant who brings a frivolous claim is liable for vexatious litigation claims. I see no compelling reason to give clients a free pass." More

Carolyn Elefant has a different take on the numbers. In "Make Bar Complaints Public -- At Least to Other Lawyers," she writes:

"As many of my fellow bloggers and readers know, I'm no fan of bar disciplinary programs.  Among other things, I believe that the bars disproportionally target solos and pursue sanctions for trivial infractions while sometimes failing to seriously investigate real dangers.  That's why many may be surprised to learn that after seeing ABA's 2003 statistics on bar disciplinary proceedings mentioned by my blogger-colleagues Bob Ambrogi and Ben Cowgill, my first reaction was that all 119,863 of these complaints should be made available for review by other attorneys.  Here's why..." More 

What do you think? Both bloggers are open to comments.

Posted by John Bringardner on April 6, 2005 at 11:25 AM | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

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