No Discipline For Second Road Bump

The New Jersey Supreme Court agreed that a retired attorney receive no discipline for a failure to have a written fee agreement.

The Disciplinary Review Board had so proposed

the Board considered that respondent was an attorney in New Jersey for forty-eight years before retiring in 2015. Although he received a private reprimand, that discipline was issued thirty years ago, when respondent had already been an attorney for twenty-one years. After that private reprimand, respondent practiced for another twenty-seven years without incident. Essentially, respondent has had two full, otherwise unblemished, legal careers, that serve as bookends to one minor bump in the road. Moreover, he cooperated with the investigation in this matter, and readily admitted his misconduct by entering into a consent to discipline.

Therefore, on balance, this mitigation, coupled with the fact that respondent has been retired for over three years, supports a finding that the public interest is fully protected without the need to discipline respondent. Hence, the Board determined that respondent’s misconduct was de minimis and no discipline is warranted.

I think this a reasonable result. (Mike Frisch)