Indiana Wants Me (To Sit For 45 Days)

The Indiana Supreme Court imposed a 45-day suspension with automatic reinstatement for omissions in a license application

Respondent, who is licensed to practice law in Ohio, applied for a provisional license in Indiana in 2018 pursuant to Indiana Admission and Discipline Rule 6(1). In response to a question in the application asking if he had been a named party in any civil actions, Respondent failed to disclose his Ohio marital dissolution case, in which post-dissolution matters were being actively litigated at the time of his application. At a hearing in the Ohio case, Respondent admitted submitting tax returns with inflated income figures in connection with a mortgage refinance application. Because of the omission of the marital dissolution case in Respondent’s provisional license application, this information did not come to light until after he was admitted to practice law in Indiana.

To be eligible for a provisional license, the applicant must have been “actively engaged in the practice of law”—meaning, as relevant here, “performing legal services for the general public as a lawyer for at least 1,000 hours per year”—for at least five of the seven years preceding the application. In response to an inquiry from the Board of Law Examiners during the pendency of Respondent’s provisional license application, Respondent inaccurately stated he had practiced in excess of 1,000 hours annually since his Ohio bar admission in 2010 and had devoted an average of 30 hours per week to the practice of law.

Sanction

The parties propose the appropriate discipline is a 45-day suspension with automatic reinstatement. The Court, having considered the submissions of the parties, now approves the agreed discipline.

(Mike Frisch)