Hallelujah!
Chief Judge of the State of New York Jonathan Lippman,
- the very one whose buddy Sheldon Silver was just indicted for fraud/theft of honest service of a public official, in federal court,
- the very one who climbed to power with the help of that same Sheldon Silver, and
- the very one who authors decisions in the Court of Appeals distinguishing constitutional violations into "substantial" and "insubstantial" - made a huge step (at least this is how it is announced) to change how attorneys in New York are being disciplined.
For that purpose, Judge Lippman appointed a "statewide commission" to review attorney discipline and make it (allegedly) more effective and consistent (consistent with what - nobody knows, right now the only consistency it shows is with the whims of the judiciary and politically connected attorneys who "serve" in the disciplinary committees).
The commission consists of 40 members, 3 of them non-attorneys, but all three of the non-attorneys are the "yes"-men (and women) for the attorney grievance committees.
Who are the lay individuals who had the happy occasion to have been appointed to "serve" in the distinguished company of the "prominent members of the bench and the bar" who came together to consider what to do with regulation of the legal profession which can soon either die on its own or be struck down by federal authorities as unconstitutional and designed and enforced with anticompetitive motivation and not with consumer interests in mind?
Here are the "winners":
Consumer No. 1 of 3, Rita DiMartino - a "lay" member of the Attorney Grievance Committee of the Appellate Division 1st Judicial Department where the ratio of attorneys to non-attorneys is 5 to 1 (12 lay members out of 73 members total, so it is 61 attorneys, 12 non-attorneys. Do you think there will be any times when, with such a ratio, Rita DiMartino could carry through a "no"? That's it, that's why she is simply a bobbing head of the committee, a puppet put into the commission to declare to the public - see? we put A CONSUMER as a member of our "statewide commission".
Consumer No. 2 of 3, William T. McDonald, a "lay" member of the Attorney Grievance Committee of the Appellate DIvision 4th Judicial Department where the ratio of attorneys to non attorneys is 6 to 1 (63 attorneys, 9 non-attorneys). As you understand, that's one more decoy for the public demonstrating that A CONSUMER of legal services was appointed to the "statewide commission" thinking how to save the sinking ship of the legal profession without deregulating it - which is the call of times.
Consumer No. 3 of 3, Akosua Yeboah, a "lay" member of the Attorney Grievance Committee of the Appellate Division 3rd Department where the ratio of attorneys to non-attorneys is 6 to 1 (18 attorneys to 3 non-attorneys), if one forgets that one of the non-attorneys, Dr. Hany Ghaleb, is married to an attorney and former judge Jhilmil "Jill" Ghaleb, then it will be 19 interested market participants to 2 consumers of legal services. With a ratio such as this, no "no" votes from Akosua Yeboah will ever be carrier, so this person is yet another decoy of the system to show that A CONSUMER was appointed both to the grievance committee and to the "statewide commission" as to how to fix the system that was designed to be corrupt and self-serving.
Of course, the ratio of market participants over consumers in the "statewide commission" is 37:3, or 12.33: 1.
I understand that "prominent" attorneys, even though they command high fees and will fight tooth and claw to keep those high fees at the expense of the consumer, are, on average, not really strong in math.
Yet, when a bunch of market participants get together, invite a couple of entrenched decoys to serve as a distraction for the public while consumers are otherwise excluded, and try to decide how to save their high fees and their monopoly to serve the consumer base that predominantly cannot afford their services and is hurting because of it - please, don't call it service to the public!
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