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When Lawyers Ignore Common Sense
When my colleague Carolyn Elefant isn't posting here at Legal Blog Watch, she of course writes her own blog, My Shingle, where she has a jaw-dropping post about a law-practice "franchise" gone bad. It all started when a Pennsylvania lemon-law firm, Kimmel & Silverman, hired an inexperienced lawyer, Robyn Glassman-Katz, to operate a branch office in Owings Mills, Md. It ended with Glassman-Katz consenting to disbarment and Kimmel and Silverman both facing indefinite suspension in Maryland.
As Elefant explains, in the first year after the Pennsylvania lawyers hired Glassman-Katz, she filed more than 500 cases -- many in the wrong venue. A full 47 of her cases were dismissed, purely because of her failure to respond to discovery requests. Maryland's Attorney Grievance Commission filed charges against Glassman-Katz in 2006, and although she claimed lack of supervision in her defense, she eventually consented to disbarment. As for the firm, the grievance committee didn't buy its argument that it knew nothing of the problems in the Maryland office, recommending that both lawyers be indefinitely suspended. At a hearing last week, the Maryland Court of Appeals gave every indication it would agree with the recommendation.
Elefant sees lessons here for lawyers who may find themselves considering similar arrangements. For the lawyer being hired, "Know your limits. If you find that you can't handle a case or don't know what to do, just stop." On the hiring side, before making a decision, "engage in due diligence" and "install systems to make a hire accountable." For me, what made my jaw drop about it all was the utter lack of common sense displayed by anyone involved.
Posted by Robert J. Ambrogi on June 10, 2008 at 11:25 AM | Permalink
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