You canât fire me; I quit!
Iâm willing to bet this allows him to move to a new state and open up shop all over again. He probably wouldnât even have to pass an exam.
I doubt that this twit is the first US lawyer to have tried this dodge. In fact the Green Card lawyers tried it back in the day. Didnât work for them.
The reason is that suspending membership does not usually suspend disciplinary actions against the member. And when you try for another bar you are required to state that you have no pending disciplinary hearings at your previous one.
On top of that, it looks like the court is going to sanction the lawyers involved. That goes on the lawyerâs record and has to be disclosed when applying to any bar. It is the sort of thing that might lead a court to refuse to allow pro hac vice representation out of state.
So no, I donât think it is likely to work.
Something that nobody has mentioned yet about this guy: All this copyright trolling stuff is his side gig.
His day job is as a divorce lawyer:
(I saw the Illinois bar thing, and looked him up. He has an office near me, apparently.)
Whatâs the chance of getting caught if Copyright trolley simply fails (Oh My!) to disclose any prior disciplinary actions to the bar at which they are applying? Could it be that simple to avoid?
You mean what is the chance that the guyâs reputation will follow him after his activities have been on Boing Boing etc.
I would conservatively estimate that probability as 1.0
Full disclosure: I work for a State Bar, but not in the Admissions or Discipline departments.
Most state bars have reciprocal discipline systems. So if a lawyer is disbarred in one state, the other states take note and disbar him/her as well. They have their own hearings and in rare cases the discipline is not reciprocated, but in a case like this it would definitely be noticed.
In the state I work, a resignation while under investigation is classified and coded differently than a normal voluntary resignation (or simply going âinactiveâ). There are even blogs like http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/legal_profession/ that gather all of the disciplinary actions from various bars and compile them. I am very, very confident that this guy will not be a lawyer anymore in any state.
Surely Iâm not the first person to notice that his name, John Steele, is a perfect name to star in one of those porn films that he threatens to link to other peopleâs names? I mean, come on.
Does it follow that he wonât continue copyright driving trollies? It doesnât take a lawyer to send a scary scary letter.
I actually highly doubt that this is what he is doing. It wouldnât keep him from getting disbarred in any state I know of, and Illinois is a state with very well-developed lawyer discipline law due to the fact that itâs a big state with a lot of lawyers. If he was just giving up, theyâd do what in Pennsylvania (IAAL in PA) is called âdisbarment on consent,â which is a voluntary disbarment with no findings of fact or law. Doing it by consent and saving the state bar a lot of money by not having to put on a case theoretically makes it easier to get reinstated, in states that allow reinstatement from disbarment (but even in those, youâre talking about maybe 3 people in 100 getting reapproved later, and those are usually in cases where the problem was drugs or booze and you can document that youâve been sober for umpteen years and have been washing the feet of lepers on alternate Tuesdays when you run out of other good deeds to do).
The sanctions orders are still in effect in California-- that would keep him from going to another state to set up shop, even if going inactive would somehow cause him to escape the clutches of Illinois, which it wouldnât. The general public really doesnât realize how much information you have to provide about yourself (so that a state can do further research) before being admitted to a state bar. Ask a recent law graduate whoâs passed the bar about how his or her âcharacter and fitnessâ is going, and prepare yourself for a long story even if itâs going well. TV portrays lawyer licensing as a simple and routine thing. It isnât-- it takes dozens of hours of paperwork, credit checks, criminal background histories, fingerprints, etc. even if youâve never gotten a speeding ticket in your life (mine was three times as voluminous because I have a hyphenated last name, and so had to prove a negative for every conceivable variation of my name). And thatâs just the part where you accumulate your packet to hand over to the Character and Fitness People-- you usually wait for months after that to get any sort of response.
I suspect that Steeleâs reason for going inactive is far more prosaic-- it costs a lawyer hundreds of dollars a year to keep a license active (registration fees, plus the cost of taking continuing education). If youâre going down anyway, why waste the money to keep a license youâre not using anyway (because of bad publicity) active?
I was not aware that Hell had such stringent requirements.
Edit: Please donât sue me.
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