As we have discussed before, unethical behavior or professional misconduct is different than malpractice. When a lawyer is unethical or breaks the Rules of Professional Conduct, there may not be legal malpractice, with monetary damages that must accompany such a claim (Sue Your Lawyer – Two Lawsuits in One). Lawyers are licensed in the state where they practice, and ethics complaints, or grievances, are filed with the official body in their state that governs their license. In some cases this is a disciplinary arm of the state supreme court and in others it is a state bar association. The American Bar Association has put together a list of the contact information for the governing bodies that oversee attorneys in each state – ABA Directory of Lawyer Disciplinary Agencies. A link is also provided in the Help Yourself menu on the left side of this blog’s home page.

I actually filed a complaint against a lawyer with a state bar disciplinary board today. Because these matters are held in the strictest confidence, I cannot say where or against whom I made the complaint. I can say, however, that I was not the wronged party. The attorney in question did something I thought was unethical relative to a friend of mine. I wrote a letter, described the situation, and listed the Rules of Professional Conduct that I thought the attorney had broken. The American Bar Association publishes a document called the Model Rules of Professional Conduct. Most states adopt these rules, or some version of these rules, as their own.

The Rules of Professional Conduct are pretty straightforward and include things such as:

• Competence – lawyers should not take on representation in areas of the law in which they are not competent
• Diligence – lawyers need to pursue representation in a timely fashion and not let litigation languish in their offices or the courts
• Communication – lawyers need to maintain open communication with their clients and keep clients advised of the progress of their legal matter
• Fees – the fees that lawyers charge need to be fair (they never seem fair, but this is a market-driven standard of the community the lawyer practices in)
• Conflict of Interest – this one is complicated, and often breached, but in the simplest of terms means that a lawyer cannot represent someone when he already represents someone else whose interest in the same legal matter is adverse to the new client

This is only the tip of the iceberg, but starts the discussion about ethics that will be ongoing. I also wanted to brag a little about filing the complaint because it was a personal and moral obligation that I felt I had to a friend. We’ll see what comes of it.