Ethics opinions
An Horry County public defender was given a public reprimand for numerous violations, including failing to communicate with clients, failing to communicate with the Office of Disciplinary Counsel during their investigation, and failing to give competent representation to clients. This lawyer's case has re-sparked debate about the overwhelming caseloads that public defenders are working with - it raises the question, is the public defender simply providing incompetent representation to indigent clients, or is he prevented from providing competent representation by the conditions he is given to work in?
My own rant - sorry if you are sick of hearing it: When caseloads become unmanageable, public defenders have an ethical responsibility to refuse cases - with no funding, huge caseloads, and insufficient office staff, public defenders cannot possibly fulfill their duty to independently investigate every case, to meet with their clients, to respond to their clients' communications, and to do even the most basic preparation for trial in their cases. If you are a chief public defender and you know that your attorneys are overwhelmed, stop accepting cases. If you are a rank and file public defender and you are not prepared for trial, refuse to proceed and make a record as to why you were unable to be prepared.
Another attorney was publicly reprimanded for failing to communicate with his clients he was defending in a civil matter, including failing to inform them when an arbitrator awarded damages to the plaintiff in their case.
An attorney was disbarred after he allowed his license to be suspended for failing to complete CLE requirements, then failed to tell his clients about the disciplinary proceedings, failed to keep records of his trust account, misappropriated funds from his trust account, and did not keep malpractice insurance (which means the laundry list of clients whose cases he was neglecting got screwed). The sanction includes a requirement that the attorney enter a monitoring contract with Lawyers Helping Lawyers before he can seek to be reinstated (among other requirements), which indicates that the difficulties may have been brought on by substance abuse.
An attorney was disbarred after not keeping up her trust account, misusing clients' funds, being charged herself with issuing fraudulent checks, not paying a court reporter for a transcript, and failing to communicate with her clients.
One thing that all of these cases have in common is the failure to communicate with clients - whether it is a symptom of more serious underlying problems or the source of the complaints in and of itself, it is clear that if we find ourselves not taking clients' phone calls or not responding to correspondence from clients, we need to step back and take a look at our practice and figure out what we can do differently.
