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Lawyers Allegedly Behaving Badly

Judge Rw GIF
 
From awhile ago, but still awful...

Lawyers misappropriated millions from clients' funds but few faced criminal charges​


More than 200 Canadian lawyers who were disciplined by their law societies between 2010 and 2015 misappropriated about $160 million of their clients' funds, a CBC News investigation has found.

But most of those lawyers were never charged with crimes. CBC could find evidence of criminal prosecutions involving fewer than 10 per cent of the total number of disciplined lawyers in that time frame.

An analysis of public records over six years shows law societies sanctioned 220 members for taking or mishandling money from clients or overcharging them, either negligently or intentionally.

Lawyers were punished for a variety of infractions, including helping themselves to clients' trust funds, keeping money that belonged to a deceased client's estate, mishandling of client funds, charging for services not provided and charging fees that were so unreasonable that they constituted misconduct.


 
ModlrMike said:

An Ontario judge tossed a court filing seemingly written with AI. Experts say it's a growing problem​

Artificial intelligence can produce false information that can make its way into court submissions​

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I think a standard practice by the courts to immediately order solicitor-client costs to be paid by the offending lawyer personally for wasting the other party's time should be instituted. I'm not sure what other monetary penalties, such as a fine, can be levied by a judge in a civil case for wasting the court's time but big money penalties have an effect. Almost all law societies now issue fairly heavy costs awards against offending lawyers to compensate the law society for the costs of investigating and prosecuting rules infractions.

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dapaterson said:
He misappropriated $3.2M, and $2.1M was repaid (per https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/rockland-lawyer-stéphane-langlois-disbarred-for-misappropriating-millions-in-clients-money-1.5958865) Seems to me that the LSO should be repaying the remainder as well.
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I can't speak for Ontario. The Manitoba reimbursement fund was based on repaying every provable claim. We did have some circumstances where monies were held by lawyers as "investments" for some people rather than as trust funds in legal transactions. The LSM would only pay for monies lost in the course of legal services, not transactions unrelated to the individual's work as a lawyer.

Ontario limits the amount payable out of its "Compensation Fund as follows:

14. Maximum grant: Convocation will, from time to time, determine the maximum amount payable by the Fund.

(a) For losses resulting from funds given to a lawyer on or after September 22, 2016, the maximum grant is $500,000. For losses resulting from funds given to a lawyer between April 24, 2008, and September 21, 2016, the maximum grant is $150,000. Grants for such losses originating prior to April 24, 2008 are subject to the maximum in place at the time funds were advanced. The maximum grant is $10,000 for a loss resulting from dishonesty on the part of a paralegal licensee.
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And before you say it, yeah, I agree $500,000 seems light considering today's real estate transactions.

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Assuming his plea deal goes through: six years, but statutory parole at most four years in, possibly as early as to years in. Minus repayment, he walks away up $1M (or $500K / year in jail).

Some would suggest that there's a problem, and that if there is truly "profession" that said "profession" should be proactively seeking to raise the limits in the interest of protecting the public.
 
dapaterson said:
Assuming his plea deal goes through: six years, but statutory parole at most four years in, possibly as early as to years in. Minus repayment, he walks away up $1M (or $500K / year in jail).

Some would suggest that there's a problem, and that if there is truly "profession" that said "profession" should be proactively seeking to raise the limits in the interest of protecting the public.
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We've gone through this before. Aside from insurance for negligence - which lawyers also carry - name me another profession that reimburses the public for theft by its members.

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FJAG said:
We've gone through this before. Aside from insurance for negligence - which lawyers also carry - name me another profession that reimburses the public for theft by its members.

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If lawyers want legal protection for their racket, then the profession has accountabilities to the public for their conduct.
 
dapaterson said:
If lawyers want legal protection for their racket, then the profession has accountabilities to the public for their conduct.
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Read. My. Lips. They have no legal protection. They have legal responsibilities and obligations.

Self regulation is a curse that eats up tens of thousands of hours of work by volunteer lawyers and lay benchers every year. I did eight years as a bencher sitting on complaints investigation and discipline committees. It's a bloody chore.

You've got perpetual complaints but don't have any understanding of the inner workings of the system.

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FJAG said:
Read. My. Lips. They have no legal protection. They have legal responsibilities and obligations.

Self regulation is a curse that eats up tens of thousands of hours of work by volunteer lawyers and lay benchers every year. I did eight years as a bencher sitting on complaints investigation and discipline committees. It's a bloody chore.

You've got perpetual complaints but don't have any understanding of the inner workings of the system.

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I see a million dollars stolen by a man in a self regulating profession and the self regulating profession doesn't see that as a problem.
 
dapaterson said:
I see a million dollars stolen by a man in a self regulating profession and the self regulating profession doesn't see that as a problem.
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That’s disingenuous. They’ve barred him from the profession.

As FJAG noted, they all have to carry liability insurance. The premiums for that socialize the liability burden across the profession. It’s required by their regulatory body.

What else do the professional regulators have the power to do that they’ve not done? How do you contend they ‘don’t see it as a problem’?
 
dapaterson said:
I see a million dollars stolen by a man in a self regulating profession
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That part is true
dapaterson said:
and the self regulating profession doesn't see that as a problem.
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That part is pure horseshit and exists only in your mind and not reality.

Madoff stole $63 Billion by some estimates. How much has the US Security and Exchange Commission paid out? None. Of the $18 billion of direct losses, only $14.4 billion have been recovered. The rest remains outstanding and none of the securities communities have contributed nickel one to making those investors whole again.

Thieves and criminals exist in every corner of the world and in every profession including self regulating ones. I repeat, what other profession would the members have paid out $2.1 million?

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Per the sworn testimony of the accused:

Asked if the auditor checked the balance of the trust accounts in 2015, Langlois said in English, "All I know is that I was able to turn him ... I was able to make him look the other way."

Langlois testified the auditor told him to choose some files to look at so he could write his report, and also claimed he bribed the auditor.

"The guy from the Law Society left my office with a gift certificate to my Boston Pizza and tickets for a Senators game," he testified in French.
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Have not been able to find anything suggesting that the LSO has taken action on this. One would think that an agent of the LSO accepting a bribe to overlook his fraud enters into the territory where the LSO has culpability above and beyond any statutory maximums.

 
dapaterson said:
Per the sworn testimony of the accused:



Have not been able to find anything suggesting that the LSO has taken action on this. One would think that an agent of the LSO accepting a bribe to overlook his fraud enters into the territory where the LSO has culpability above and beyond any statutory maximums.

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Believe me the LSO will have taken action to investigate this. It sounds to me like the accused is not only a thief but a spinner of tall tales. Auditors are accountants hired by the law societies. They also work under their own code of professional standards and having one bribed with a pizza certificate and some Senators tickets sounds a bit over the top to me. If I had a nickel for every time someone caught out doing something wrong and then tried to deflect the blame elsewhere . . .

The procedure is that auditors select the files that they will spot check. They do not ask the lawyer to "choose some files." That defeats the concept of a spot check and would be just plain stupid. Auditors will also run the firm's trust account - there generally is just one pooled trust account but can be more - besides spot checking client files. There's a certain rhythm to trust transactions and good auditors can sense when a transaction appears suspicious. Spot checking files is done to look for financial transactions that may have bypassed trust accounts. Note as well that in Manitoba we had a Practice Committee that effectively mentored lawyers who had weak practices but were not dishonest, just not as competent as they could be. Their work was to proactively get these folks up to standard.

LSOs consist of both paid full-time staff operating under a CEO, a number of volunteer lawyers and private citizens as benchers which form the governing body and most of the committees, and outside professionals brought in for specific tasks. You can't do a cover-up because someone will spill the beans as sure as God made little green apples. If there was culpability, action would be taken as paying a million bucks is a small price to pay. News that there was a cover-up would be disastrous.

I'll admit to one thing. In 2006, when I left Manitoba, the LSM was grappling with the frequency of audits. The standard throughout my tour as an active bencher had been to do an audit of every law firm once per year. By the time I left (I was what we call a life bencher by then and only peripherally involved) there were so many return audits of people who had mismanaged trust accounts (not necessarily thefts) and new cases of mismanagement that the annual spot audits had lapsed to roughly every second year and was threatening to get even longer. The issue was how to deal with this greater case load. There were a number of options under consideration and I didn't stay informed on the solution because by that time I was no longer actively practicing. The point here isn't that there was a problem developing, but that everyone knew that there was a problem developing and that positive steps were being taken to resolve it. That's how law societies operate.

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Lie about witnessing signatures? Delete messages in an app to hide your malfeasance?

In British Columbia that gets you one whole month of suspension from the profession. To his credit, though, he self-reported.

www.ctvnews.ca

Vancouver lawyer suspended for submitting false documents in support of client’s $3.3M loan application

A Vancouver lawyer has admitted to improperly notarizing documents and solemnly declaring affidavits that contained information he knew was false in order to help a corporate client secure a $3.3-million loan from a U.S. bank.
www.ctvnews.ca www.ctvnews.ca

 
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