The New York Times has taken aim at the lawyers – or more correctly, those who administer lawyers – to determine that at least in the highly lawyer-populated New York, the way in which bad lawyers are administered is both inconsistent and often hidden.

The NYT considers that a state with 166,000 lawyers should be looking at a process of handling bad ones more appropriately.

From the Times:

In 2009, a lawyer in New York helped his client settle a claim for $30,000. The lawyer then had the check issued in his own name, deposited it into his own account and used all of the funds for himself. The client demanded his money to no avail.

It took more than three years before the lawyer was disbarred for stealing a client’s funds. During all that time, the lawyer, who already had a history of serious disciplinary infractions, kept working.

This is a disturbingly common story in New York, which has more lawyers than any other state. Punishments for those who violate obligations to a client — if not the law — are slow, inconsistently levied and often hidden from the public.

Professional discipline is essential to the integrity of any legal system. Unfortunately in New York, the process for dealing with lawyer misconduct is “deficient in design and operation,” writes Stephen Gillers, a professor at New York University School of Law in an article to be published next month in N.Y.U.’s Journal of Legislation and Public Policy.

Professor Gillers examined attorney-discipline cases going back to 1982 and all 577 court opinions imposing sanctions issued over the past six years. In addition to the many instances of “unacceptable” delay in the official response to complaints about lawyers, he documents the great disparity in the way similar violations are handled by courts in different parts of the state.

For example, a lawyer who filed false documents, made false statements and improperly notarized a client’s signature was suspended for two and a half years by the appeals court in Manhattan. But, in Brooklyn, comparable actions by a different lawyer resulted only in a formal rebuke but not a suspension. In upstate New York, appellate courts rarely explain the reasons for their decision to sanction or not sanction, and, when they do, they often don’t follow their own earlier rulings.

Perhaps most troubling is the overall lack of transparency that pervades the system. Unlike 40 other states, New York does not inform the public of pending charges against lawyers. It is also unnecessarily difficult to learn when a lawyer has been officially sanctioned, even though sanctions — which can include censure, suspension or disbarment — are part of the public record.

At the very least, New York, which has 166,000 lawyers, should adopt uniform standards for disciplining lawyers. The American Bar Association set clear and sensible standards in 1986, but some states have successfully established their own.

In California, for example, almost all disciplinary cases are handled by a State Bar Court that is staffed with full-time judges who issue thorough rulings. Professor Gillers also recommends that every lawyer’s disciplinary history be made easily available online, and that law firms tell potential clients how to access the information.

Not everyone will be eager to upset the status quo, including the appellate judges who would like to maintain their control over the process, and the lawyers who benefit from the leniency of local courts. But it must change if New Yorkers are to have confidence in the lawyers who represent them.

See: The New York Times

A lawsuit filed on behalf of two Japanese-American former Japanese sex slaves is one of the most controversial lawsuits filed in the United States.

Forbes contributor Eamonn Fingelton writes about the little-known lawsuit that has enraged many, including many lawyers and legal bloggers.  One, LA criminal lawyer Ken White calls the lawsuit “thoroughly contemptible.”  Others have equally strong words to say about the suit.

From Forbes:

Would any self-respecting U.S. law firm represent a client who suggested the Jews deserved the Holocaust? Probably not. As a matter of honor, most law firms would run a mile, and even the least honorable would conclude that the damage to their reputation wasn’t worth it.

Where imperial Japan’s atrocities are concerned, however, at least one top U.S. law firm hasn’t been so choosy. In what is surely one of the most controversial civil suits ever filed in the United States, the Los Angeles office of Mayer Brown is trying to prove that the so-called comfort women – the sex slaves used by the Imperial Japanese Army in World War II – were no more than common prostitutes.

The suit has been filed on behalf of two Japanese-Americans, Michiko Shiota Gingery and Koichi Mera, plus a corporation called GAHT-US (a bizarre entity whose involvement must be a particular embarrassment to any decent person at Mayer Brown – more about this in a moment). At the center of the controversy is a Korean-funded memorial to the comfort women which was recently established in a park in Glendale, California. The suit suggests that the above named Japanese-Americans will suffer “irreparable injury” from “feelings of exclusion, discomfort, and anger” if the memorial is not removed.

This is, of course, the functional equivalent of suggesting that German-Americans suffer “irreparable injury” from memorials to the Jewish Holocaust. Basically it is preposterous.

Although the suit has so far received little attention in the mainstream American press, it has provoked outrage elsewhere, not least in London where the noted British commentator Robert Fisk has provided a particularly trenchant account. It has also sparked a firestorm among legal bloggers. Here, for instance, is a comment from Ken White, a prominent Los Angeles-based criminal attorney: “I cannot remember a lawsuit that so immediately repulsed and enraged…..This lawsuit is thoroughly contemptible. It should fail, and everyone involved should face severe social consequences.”

Strong words but White’s assessment is hard to fault. The indisputable historical record, after all, shows that countless women who served in the Imperial Army’s brothels were innocents seized at gunpoint in Japan’s erstwhile colonies and forced into sexual servitude. (Yes, of course, not all were innocents. The army’s first recourse was to professional prostitutes but even if every prostitute was prepared to volunteer for the truly appalling conditions involved, there were far too few prostitutes to serve the army’s purposes. Japan’s war was vast, spread as it was across eight time zones and involving at least six million troops — and for all in forward positions it was a nightmare.)

Read more at Forbes.