A FOIA request was made with the Federal Trade Commission verifying results of its investigation of attorney regulation system in New York

In April of 2015 I have made an anti-trust complaint to the Federal Trade Commission requesting to investigate anti-competitive nature, structure and practices of attorney regulation in New York State and New York's non-compliance with the U.S. Supreme Court precedent North Carolina Board of Dental Examiners v Federal Trade Commission decided in February of 2015 - indicating that regulating a market by market-players without statutory approval or neutral state supervision is in violation of federal anti-trust laws that strips such regulators of "state immunity".

In New York, attorneys are regulated by the statute, Judiciary Law 90.

Judiciary Law 90 does not provide for existence or operation of attorney grievance committees, and does not approve of populating such attorney grievance committees with super-majority of market players, licensed attorneys (18 out of 21).

After my complaint was filed, in December of 2015, New York changed its rules of attorney discipline and issued new rules, 22 NYCRR 1240.

While the new rules, instead of strictly requiring for super-majorities of attorney grievance committees to be lawyers, instead required that "no fewer than" 3 members out of 21 should be non-lawyers,

it nevertheless allowed for supermajorities of market players, licensed attorneys, to be appointed to attorney grievance committees - and all 4 attorney grievance committees in  New York, upon my information and belief, consist of supermajorities of licensed attorneys - without statutory approval (22 NYCRR 1240 is not a statute and was not enacted by the New York State Legislature), and without neutral state supervision by people who are not licensed attorneys.

Moreover, the 2/3 membership quorum requirement provides for decisions of attorney disciplinary cases by licensed attorneys, competitors of the disciplined lawyer, alone, without participation of non-lawyers.

The math is very simple.

2/3rds of 21 is 14.

The minimum required number of non-attorney members of the committee is 3.

No matter how ardently the non-lawyer members may be against (or for) discipline in certain cases, they can never outvote market players, licensed attorneys, who may be driven by interests that are very far from those of public interest and protection of consumers.

After 22 NYCRR 1240 was introduced, I filed an additional antitrust complaint with FTC, and it responded, as with the initial complaint, promising to turn my complaints to the "appropriate staff" for investigation.

The "appropriate staff" has been investigating my complaints for nearly 2 years now, with no response so far, while New York continues its anticompetitive practices, hurting consumers of legal services, since attorneys in New York are disciplined not in order to protect consumers, but in order to eliminate competition of the attorney grievance committee members (and their friends and relatives), and in order to eliminate critics of the judiciary and of the high-ranking attorneys who can effectively sue them for misconduct from the reach of legal consumers, widening the "justice gap".

In view of FTC's wheel of justice rotating with a lethargic speed, today I filed a FOIA request with FTC requesting to provide to me a copy of the investigative file in order to see how my complaints of anticompetitive practices of attorney regulation in New York have been investigated (if at all) by FTC.

I will publish FTC's responses to my FOIA request.

Stay tuned.