Posted by
NOTLEGALROADKILLYET on Monday, December 11, 2006 5:17:02 PM
If we are to reverse the situation where Lawyers protect Judges, Judges protect Lawyers, and no one protects the public in Colorado, it seems to me that we need to begin to talk solutions.
Any "solution" must incorporate the following:
1. It must become obvious to Judges and Lawyers that ethics misconduct WILL be punished by more than a letter of reprimand.
2. Because secrecy promotes judicial misconduct, judges who fail to enforce ethics and court rules involving attorney misconduct must suffer some public "consequence," either humiliation, or monetary, preferably both.
3. A mechanism must be established to allow citizens who are damaged by unethical conduct by opposing counsel to be made whole. I prefer triple damages plus attorneys fees, doubled again if a valid complaint made to a judge, or obvious misconduct was not acted upon by a judge.
4. Perjury needs to be removed from the legal playbook and be taken seriously by prosecutors.
5. The Colorado Bar Association needs to be a guarantor of damage awards against its members.
6. The State Supreme Court must be "encouraged" both to follow its own ethics rules and to lead, follow, or get out of the way of citizen efforts to see attorney and judicial ethics enforced.
It seems to me that there are at least two ways to "reform" the legal ethics system.
When I started this blog, I favored trying to establish a five (or seven) person commission to assume the licensing, rule making, and enforcement functions that the Supreme Court now performs. I watched Amendment 38 go down in flames. That amendment tried to fix everything, and left its detractors many legitimate reasons to disparage it.
Recently, I have been giving some thought to the tort solution that the Trial Lawyers seem to love as long as they are not defendants. The point would be to make them defendants. From a tactical initiative writing point, this has the advantage of being more difficult to attack at election time.
I will be writing more on these ideas in the coming days and weeks.