Of course, attorney licensing and discipline in New York exists (allegedly) for protection of the public.
Of course, the public is not given nearly any voice to decide which attorney needs to be investigated or disciplined, as lay members of the public have just a token presence in the attorney disciplinary committees.
Of course, attorney disciplinary hearings, (same as judicial disciplinary hearings) must be open to the public in accordance with EXISTING law, but it never happens for judicial disciplinary hearings.
Of course, when a disciplinary proceeding against an attorney is triggered, as in my case, by a shower of retaliatory sanctions imposed by a judge after I sued him, and I want a public hearing in my disciplinary case to show the public just HOW and WHY it is protected from me - the very same judiciary (literally) who was giving the address on 2015 (Eugene Fahey sitting behind Jonathan Lippman during the address - a judge out of my disciplinary panel in the 4th Department who denied me my statutory right to an open public court hearing) fights tooth and claw not to give the attorney a right which the Legislature already gave the attorney.
Of course, the "task force" for reviewing what needs to be revamped in the attorney disciplinary system in New York will by chaired by the Chief Administrative Judge of the State of New York A. Gail Prudenti and will consist of "members of the bench and the bar" (judges and attorneys).
My question to you, ladies and gentlemen, New Yorkers, is why Jonathan Lippman used YOUR money to create a task force without YOUR participation to decide how it is better to "revamp" a system that is designed (allegedly) to protect YOU.
Why such an extreme paternalism - at your expense?
Why you are not asked BEFORE this decision was made whether YOU, members of the public, would like to conduct such a task force, at taxpayers' expense, without ANY input from "the bench and the bar" unless the public Task Force asks their opinion?
After all, it is the public that is sought to be protected by attorney disciplinary system? Right?
And the public that is paying a heavy price for having attorney disciplinary system, where 4 out of 5 New York litigants cannot afford an attorney, yet the disciplinary system continues to exist and, apparently, protect the rights of 20% of New Yorkers who can afford an attorney by preventing 80% of New Yorkers from ever having an attorney due to high prices of legal services CAUSED by the existence of attorney licensing.
Who gave Lippman authority to use taxpayers' money to make a decision - without public input - to create such a Task Force to begin with?
Who will be assigned to the "task force" - political donors, friends and relatives of political donors? There obviously is not going to be any public oversight over the budget of this "Task Force", assignment of this "Task Force", or how it will operate.
And, you may be assured that "members of the bar" "serving" on this "Task Force" will be completely removed from the reach of attorney discipline themselves, as already are all politically connected attorneys, as well as relatives, friends, employees and former employees of the judicial system.
And since being a licensed attorney for a set number of years is now a threshold to judgeship, and since the judgeship is the ultimate sinecure for attorneys who did not make it in the outside world and who want to earn enough money for the last 10 years before pension to get that substantial pension, and since the judiciary has a grip on attorneys and thus attorneys get out of their way to please judges, including catering them at "mentoring" programs, inviting them to free dinners with drinks, bringing them to health resorts for "educational" seminars, contributing to their election and re-election campaigns, employing judges' relatives, friends and former law clerks, it is unthinkable that anybody other than judges and lawyers would be on the task force to see how the legal profession should be regulated - if at all.
Furthermore, faithful to his course to announce populist (and meaningful, or harmful) decisions in order to appease public concerns without actually addressing them, Lippman announced a new feature in shopping for attorneys: availability of information about attorney discipline when you "shop for an attorney" on the website of the New York State Court Administration - the attorney directory.
It is obvious that tremendous work, at public expense, was done before the date of Lippman's address, February 17, 2015, so that this information system becomes possible.
As a side note, and I will address it more in a separate post regarding issues about the judiciary that got addressed (or not addressed) in Lippman's "State of the Judiciary 2015" speech, is that while information about public discipline only against attorneys is now put on the website, right next to the attorney's name (which is not bad had the attorney discipline been applied even-handedly, by neutral representatives of the public and for public benefit instead of to root out competition and whistle-blowers of judicial misconduct, as it is now), Lippman did not put any programmers to task to put available public disciplinary information next to judges' names on the judicial directory.
An interesting - and telling - omission.
I checked the information system out.
And I was amazed at what I DID NOT find on this "public information system".
What I did is I checked out information for two cases where, according to information I could find on the Internet, or know from personal sources, attorneys were suspended or not reinstated, or both, for criticism of judicial misconduct.
These two cases are of attorneys Doris Sassower and Leon Koziol.
Here is the snippet from attorney registration website for Doris Sassower:
Doris Sassower, a respected member of the bar and one of "bar leaders", suddenly fell out of grace with the judiciary and was speedily suspended, as far as I know, without a hearing, when she sued to declare cross-endorsement agreements between the parties for judges illegal.
At this time Doris Sassower and her daughter Elene Sassower are founders of the Center of Judicial Accountability, a non-profit organization taking a vocal stand for transparency of judicial disciplinary proceedings.
Ellen Sassower testified at the Senate Confirmation hearings of Jonathan Lippman and publicized the fact that there was no notice of public hearing, no allotted time for opposition witnesses, the Senate Judiciary Committee did not review information provided by opposition witnesses and did not provide that information to the Senate for purposes of confirmation of Lippman.
In other words, Elena Sassower made an open claim that Lippman is not a legitimate judge and that he is a usurper.
Usually orders regarding attorney discipline are available in the Internet.
I could not find the order of suspension of Doris Sassower - who was suspended in 1991, that is 24 (!) years ago and still not reinstated. Even when an attorney is disbarred in New York, he or she is entitled to apply for reinstatement after 7 years of disbarment.
But for a suspended attorney to remain suspended for 24 years without reinstatement?
Most interesting.
So, when Lippman announced that all public orders of discipline against attorneys are now available, I rushed to the attorney directory to look up finally, what kind of reason did the judiciary concoct to suspend Doris Sassower.
I faithfully clicked on the link under Doris Sassower's registration information.
Here is what is showed me.
Oh, yes, Lippman mentioned that he only made information available about public attorney disciplinary decisions since December of 2003, and Doris Sassower's decision was from 1991.
Yet, when members of the public look up attorneys, they do that not only to shop for an attorney - obviously you cannot employ a suspended attorney - but they may do that to see on what grounds courts decided to remove an attorney who provided services for the poor from the reach of the poor, a matter of public concern.
It would make sense to provide information about public discipline of attorneys who are publicly disciplined (disbarred, suspended, censured), but are alive at this time.
And it would make sense to also see not only the Decisions, but the attorneys' full disciplinary file - why they were disciplined, what did they answer, who complained about them, whether they applied for reinstatement, what documents they presented to be reinstated, what were the reasons, if any, to deny reinstatement.
All of those issues are issues of public concern.
If you think that, according to Judiciary Law 90(10) disciplinary information on attorneys becomes public and available at the time public discipline is imposed, think again.
I am currently suing in federal court the Professional Conduct Committee of the 3rd Department for access to the file of my husband who was disbarred by that department (under circumstances clearly suggesting corruption - I wrote about it on my blog previously), to get access to his disciplinary file which is now allegedly open to the public. The name of the case is Neroni v. Zayas, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York.
It appears that the file simply disappeared and does not exist.
And that is the "deep secret" that the New York judiciary, probably, would not want the public to know - that information as to WHY certain attorneys were suspended, disbarred and not reinstated, simply VANISHED once it allegedly was supposed to become available to the public.
Like, I am sure, information from my file will vanish if I am suspended or disbarred - while now I am not allowed access to my own file (same as my husband was not allowed access to his own file during his disciplinary proceedings), I am not allowed to open my proceedings to the public, to the point of being charged criminally for an alleged attempt to release information from MY OWN disciplinary proceedings.
So - before discipline is imposed, the information is secret because the courts say so (whether it is lawful or not, whether the attorney wants the "confidentiality" or not), and after the public discipline is imposed, the information is not available because either the Committee's block it in the hope that the suspended or disbarred attorney will be so demoralized and financially devastated that he or she will not be able to challenge them, or those documents simply vanish.
One more aspect of the information that is NOT available is information about denying reinstatements to suspended or disbarred attorneys.
Here is a snapshot of registration information of a well known New York civil rights attorney Leon Koziol who was speedily suspended after he publicly challenged judicial misconduct:
If you click on the link "View Possible Court Decisions Imposing Discipline", you will see the decision to impose discipline, but not the decision denying reinstatement.
And Mr. Koziol was denied reinstatement BECAUSE he testified before the now-disbanded Moreland Commission as to rampant and uncontrolled judicial misconduct in the State of New York, and because he runs a website and a blog where he raises issues of judicial misconduct in Family and divorce courts in New York, a matter of extreme public concern.
By the way, attorney Peter Torncello who actively opposed Mr. Koziol's reinstatement on the grounds that Mr. Koziol raised issues of public concern on his blog and in front of the Moreland Commission, resigned from the Professional Conduct Committee the same year, and he resigned "amid investigation into filing false time sheets".
According to his registration information, Peter Torncello was never publicly disciplined.
Apparently, in New York, filing false timesheets is ok for an attorney.
Speaking out on issues of public concern is not ok for an attorney.
So, the "spectacular" and "absolute best" judiciary, with its boss Judge Lippman, while throwing under-educated law students "to bridge the justice gap" and represent the poor, prevents two well qualified civil rights attorneys from returning to serving their clients because they raise issues of judicial misconduct during the time of their suspension.
And THAT must be a matter of public concern.
What I would suggest Judge Lippman might want to do if he really wants to inform the public of attorney discipline is have all the records pertaining to suspension or disbarment of attorneys now living to be scanned and put online next to their names.
What I also would like to suggest is to give information to the public not on the basis of attorney-by-attorney, but by a list.
What is NOT available on the website of the State of New York is a list of attorneys who have been licensed to practice law in New York since licensing began, even though such information is available through individual searches of attorneys.
Why this information is so important?
So that the public could readily see from the list what categories of attorneys are disciplined in New York.
I bet that then the public will have hard facts, not available now because the New York State Court Administration does not compile such statistics, and if it does not compile such statistics, it does not have to provide such statistics to the public on Freedom of Information requests (the usual and convenient tactic of the government to avoid review of its wrondgoing).
I bet that if and when not only court orders where courts usually try to obscure and hide the real issues of why an attorney is being disciplined, but also the FULL FILES, including attorney's answers and motions in their disciplinary proceedings, and affidavits and testimony of witnesses, if available, become readily accessible to the public (and that, by the way, will not require much money since not so many attorneys are disciplined), the public will know that, while the claim is that attorney licensing discipline is imposed to protect the public from bad attorneys, it operates to remove qualified civil rights and criminal defense attorneys' services from the reach of the poor.
If the public has in front of it a list of all attorneys who have ever be licensed (and disciplined) in New York, the public may come to realize that attorneys from the government, from powerful and politically connected law firms, relatives, friends, employees and/or business associates of judges are never disciplined, while discipline befalls predominantly on private, solo, independent attorneys, mostly criminal defense and civil rights lawyers, or female attorneys fighting discrimination in the legal profession, or immigrant attorneys fighting discrimination against non-native speaker attorneys.
But Lippman wouldn't want you to know that, would he, especially when he is cackling about "access to justice" and "bridging the justice gap", while actions of the judiciary operate to widen that gap and preventing it from ever being bridged.
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