In reviewing several years worth of disciplinary opinions from courts around the nation in connection with a writing project, I was struck again by a disturbing pattern. Maybe my mistake was in reading all the opinions and absorbing all the varieties of bad conduct in just a couple of days. Here's the pattern.
The courts' opinions first tell a really awful story about professional or personal misconduct, sometimes sordid or tawdry, sometimes thieving, sometimes duplicitous. The opinions lay it all out and as readers we are led to expect a proportionate sanction.
But then comes that frequent phrase "an unblemished record," a phrase one rarely sees elsewhere in life or law, sometimes accompanied by "no prior discipline" (which more often than not may mean the lawyer has not heretofore been caught), and perhaps a citation to character testimony.
And although the reader had been led to expect disbarment or a long suspension for the bad behavior so abundantly detailed -- if not placement in the stocks on the public square (hmmm!) -- he or she finds instead the most modest of sanctions -- a public reprimand or a suspension the length of a nice vacation.
I sometimes wonder if we should just forget the sanctions and instead require the lawyer to give the court's opinion to all present and prospective clients. It might better protect the public.