Bar Discipline In A Google World

The Law Society of British Columbia Review Board cited precedent for the proposition that adverse publicity is not a mitigating factor in bar discipline

…the argument that adverse media publicity should be taken into account as a mitigating factor has been rejected by the panel in Law Society of BC v. O’Neill, 2013 LSBC 23 (CanLII), where the panel found at paragraph 20(j) as follows:

The Respondent and his counsel both said that the Respondent will suffer from the adverse publicity this will bring to the Respondent.  His counsel submitted that, as we live in a “Google World”, anyone who googles the Respondent will learn of these proceedings and he will carry that stigma with him forever.

We do recognize that possibility exists and that the Respondent may suffer somewhat from it in the future.  However, we do not believe that is a significant factor for consideration.  When lawyers have misconducted themselves, the adverse publicity that comes with that must be accepted by the lawyer.  That is true for all lawyers and is not unique to this case.  It should not, in our view, be a factor which should be considered to reduce the penalty that the Panel believes is otherwise appropriate.

All lawyers will face this potential embarrassment if they are disciplined for misconduct, and we believe that to reduce an otherwise appropriate penalty because of potential public knowledge of it would be wrong in principle.  It could mean that all penalties should be reduced because of the adverse publicity about the lawyer.  We do not believe that is a correct principle to follow.

Here, the board affirmed a hearing panel’s four-month suspension of an attorney who has violated trust account rules in transitioning from solo practice to a law firm

In March 2010, Ms. Sas ceased practising as a sole practitioner and joined a larger firm of lawyers.  In early 2011, she still held monies in trust that had been received from clients while she was practising as a sole practitioner, and there were several outstanding files and unbilled time and disbursements relating to her former sole practitioner practice that needed to be dealt with.  At that time, she embarked on a file review project to deal with those outstanding files, including unbilled fees and disbursements and monies held in trust.

The hearing panel’s decision on Facts and Determination, reported at Law Society of BC v. Sas, 2015 LSBC 19 (CanLII), sets out in detail the transactions by which the Applicant “zeroed out” the trust accounts.

Having reviewed those transactions, the hearing panel concluded that the Applicant breached the Act and the Law Society Rules and that her conduct constituted professional misconduct in the following ways:

(a)         The Applicant improperly billed clients for disbursements that were not incurred;

(b)        The Applicant knew, or was wilfully blind to the fact, that those clients had been improperly billed for disbursements that were not incurred or, alternatively, was reckless as to whether those billings for disbursements were proper;

(c)         The Applicant instructed her bookkeeper to add disbursements that had not been incurred to client ledgers;

(d)        The Applicant made payments to her law corporation from trust funds:

(i)                 for disbursements that she knew, or ought to have known, were not properly incurred by those clients; and

(ii)               in some instances without immediately delivering bills to clients; and

(e)         The Applicant’s conduct in paying her law corporation from trust funds for disbursements that had not been incurred constituted misappropriation of the trust funds.

(Mike Frisch)