Another Self-Evident Discipline Matter: Leaking Client Info For Finder’s Fee

In our continuous search for the most self-evident or undeniable matter for serious bar discipline (in this case, five years’ suspension in NY), we present this headline and story today from New York Law Journal (via Law.Com): “Associate Suspended For Offering Information to Opposing Party For a Fee.” To be more specific, attorney “offered for a $2,000 fee to provide [to opponent tenant in a landlord dispute] information about how certain audiotape evidence would be used.”  (Gone are the nostalgic days of the bar fee schedules where such amounts are fixed for competing lawyers.) The tenant turned him over to his law firm (duh). In any event, this was apparently not also an improper communication with an opposing party who is represented, as the opponent tenant seems to have been on his own, and was originally willing to pay $20k to have the associate make the case go away–but the attorney did not have that kind of pull and counteroffered with the 2k leak.  Decision here.  [Alan Childress]