Overlawyered brings up the strange case of Connecticut lawyer Barbara Shea, who is suing that state’s attorney grievance committee to stop publishing information about a 2002 suspension and three reprimands she received. Shea claims that clients and potential clients have found this information, thus costing her business.

So – an attorney wants the state regulators to keep the public in the dark about her misconduct so that she can get more business. You’ve gotta love that kind of chutzpah!

Let’s face it, it’s hard to get sanctioned by the state bar. In 2007 in Washington, home to 22,087 lawyers, there were 2,029 written disciplinary grievances, resulting in . . . 74 disciplinary actions. Attorney discipline is serious stuff, and consumers need to know about it, even if it occurred years ago.

Consumers can choose for themselves whether a decade-old disciplinary action is relevant today. And attorneys can take proactive steps to present themselves as having moved past the circumstances of their discipline. What should never happen is an attorney taking to the courts in an effort to stifle public awareness.

For its part, Avvo is proud to make attorney disciplinary information easier to find (you can see Barbara Shea’s sanctions in both her Connecticut and D.C. profiles, so far she hasn’t been sanctioned in New York). And we give attorneys the tools to do what they should be doing rather than racing to the courthouse, rebuilding their practices and reputations by making themselves stand out online. Ultimately, the answer for attorneys recovering from bar discipline isn’t less information about their past, but more information about their present.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008 at 1:17 pm by Josh King, VP of Business Development and General Counsel and is filed under Josh King Posts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.