Deserving A Second Chance

The Ohio Board on Professional Conduct – which has overtaken North Carolina as having the most transparent and user friendly discipline web page – has filed reports in 10 cases.

One is about as sympathetic as any I have seen.

The Board proposes a stayed one-year suspension of an attorney who was a stay-at-home mother of four children who was married for ten years to a physically abusive husband. She stayed in the marriage for the children. 

The Board noted that “[a]ll that changed” in 2007 when she learned that he was sexually abusing their teenage daughter . She went to law enforcement immediately and he is now serving a lengthy prison term.

She returned to college and graduated from Cleveland State University, attended Ohio Northern University Law School on a full scholarship and was admitted to the Bar in 2012. She worked through law school at a Subway to support herself and her family.

She remarried in her final year of law school and has two more children with her second husband.

The misconduct occurred in seven client matters during an eight month period during which a second teenage daughter ran away from home and was living on the streets of Cleveland.

The daughter was arrested for theft and placed in a mental health facility on suicide watch. 

The attorney testified that she was “in a fog” during the period of the misconduct. She made efforts to have other counsel cover her matters by asking a judge to reassign some of her cases.

The admitted allegations involve neglect and failure to communicate with six domestic relations and one criminal client.

The conditions of the stayed suspension include two years probation and cooperation with the treatment of the Bar;s OLAP program. (Mike Frisch)