Lawyers need courage and compassion as personal virtues. But lawyers may need these virtues in ways that they had not imagined when they first entered the Bar. Statistics about lawyers are alarming. I have read that 40-50 percent of disciplinary cases involve lawyers who are suffering from an impairment, usually an addiction to alcohol or drugs. I have read that lawyers are twice as likely as other Americans to have an addiction, depression, suicidal tendencies, or stress anxiety. To be more concrete, I have read that 10 percent of Americans suffer from an addictive, emotional, or mental impairment. By contrast, these same sources estimate that 20-25 percent of lawyers suffer from an impairment. If this is true, it means that in Oklahoma at least 2,000 lawyers are practicing who are impaired. Two thousand lawyers who likely do not realize that they need to be courageous and compassionate toward themselves. Lawyers need courage to say, “I am an alcoholic,” or “I am addicted to drugs.” Lawyers need courage to say, “I am emotionally exhausted by my divorce,” or “I am overwhelmed with grief at the death of my child,” or “I am debilitated by too much work.” Once lawyers are courageous with themselves, they can be compassionate to themselves by seeking assistance to address these burdens. But not all lawyers individually will either have the insight or the courage to face the fact that they are suffering from an impairment. In those instances, their fellow lawyers must have the courage to speak the truth to the impaired lawyer. Fellow lawyers must not turn away from the impaired lawyer in the ill-advised hope that all will be OK somehow. Fellow lawyers show compassion for an impaired lawyer not by ignoring the lawyers impairment but by helping that lawyer to get needed assistance. Moreover, by acting with courage to assist an impaired lawyer, fellow lawyers can often prevent serious harms from occurring either to the impaired lawyer or to the impaired lawyers clients. Once harm occurs to clients, fellow lawyers have the obligation to report the impaired lawyer to disciplinary authorities for misconduct. Where can a lawyer with an impairment, or fellow lawyers desiring to assist, go for help? Since 1985, the Oklahoma Bar Association has supported the Lawyers-Helping-Lawyers Committee. For 12 years, the volunteer members of this committee have provided confidential, immediate responses to those who call for help. Volunteer members arrange a meeting to discuss the situation and to offer suggestions for further treatment — be it counseling, admission to a treatment center, or joining a 12-step program. Volunteer members will serve as a sponsor to meet with the impaired lawyer as often as necessary to get the lawyer on the road to recovery. Lawyers-Helping-Lawyers has the goal of recovery, not discipline. Beginning in January, the Oklahoma Bar Association committed $18,000 to match $18,000 provided by the Oklahoma Attorneys Mutual Insurance Co. to hire a part-time director for the committee. As described by the Lawyers-Helping Lawyers Committee, the director will develop treatment plans, conduct counseling sessions, make lawyer evaluations and referrals, maintain a 24-hour hotline, coordinate the activities of the committee volunteers and develop educational programs for the Bar about impairment. In addition, the director will identify professionals from other disciplines who have the skills and the desire to work with lawyers suffering from an impairment. This year is the first year that Lawyers-Helping-Lawyers has had a staff member devoted to its tasks. While the arrangement at present is only for a one-year trial period, Lawyers-Helping-Lawyers is hopeful that the trial period will convincingly show the need for a full-time director on a permanent basis beginning in 1999. Lawyers-Helping-Lawyers has acted with courage and compassion to face an issue that has not received the attention that its seriousness deserves. Lawyers are suffering; clients are at risk; the profession bears the stigma of attorneys who commit misconduct while impaired. For ourselves, our clients, and the profession, we, the organized Bar, need to say, “We, my brother and sister lawyers, are human. We are impaired. Let us show courage and compassion for one another.” To reach the Lawyers-Helping-Lawyers Committee, call 1-800-364- 7886. Drew Kershen, the Earl Sneed Centennial Professor of Law at the University of Oklahoma College of Law, welcomes your comments and contributions. You may reach him by phone at 325-4699 or by mail at the University of Oklahoma College of Law, 300 W. Timberdell Road, Norman, OK 73019-5081.
Last month I wrote about the Lawyers-Helping-Lawyers Committee as a resource for an impaired lawyer. I wrote about courage and compassion to oneself and to fellow attorneys to admit impairment and to seek recovery. Today I want to discuss the equally troubling and less pollyannaish facts of life — many impaired lawyers refuse assistance. When you have mustered the courage to confront a fellow attorney about an impairment, you have done so assuredly because you have become convinced that your friends impairment is destroying his life. You already know that that person must get help — voluntarily or involuntarily. You know that to allow them to continue impaired leads only to death and destruction. Death in a physical sense for the impaired lawyer through alcoholism, drug abuse or suicidal despair. Death for innocent people who die, for example, in auto accidents when your impaired friend gets behind the wheel. Destruction for the impaired lawyers family and loved ones who cannot continue living sane and dignified lives with the impaired person. Destruction for the impaired lawyers clients who do not receive the competent, diligent representation they deserve. As a matter of morality, you should act to save your friend and (indirectly) those around him — family, innocent people, clients. As a matter of self-protection, you must act because failure to act can lead to professional discipline. The Bar is a self-regulating profession. If you have knowledge of a lawyer or a judge impaired in their fitness for professional duties, Rules of Professional Conduct (RPC) Rule 8.3 mandates that you “shall inform the appropriate professional authority.” Failure to report when appropriate is itself a disciplinary violation. If you are a partner or a supervising lawyer, you are accountable under RPC Rule 5.1 for anothers ethical violations if you have failed to adopt the reasonable measures in your firm that assure compliance with ethical conduct. In addition, Rule 5.1 also imposes personal ethical responsibility upon you if you know of an impairment and fail to take reasonable remedial actions that can avoid or mitigate the consequences of anothers (the impaired lawyer) professional misconduct. As these violations of Rule 5.1 are your personal ethical obligations, you may also have malpractice liability for your failure to act to prevent harm, even though you have tried to insulate yourself by becoming a limited liability company or a limited liability partnership. Who is the appropriate professional authority to whom you must report an impaired lawyer? As I have already intimated, if the impaired lawyer is willing voluntarily to seek recovery and has not committed an ethics violation, the appropriate professional authority is the Lawyers- Helping-Lawyers Committee. You may refer the impaired lawyer willing to seek recovery to the L-H-L for the committees guidance, counseling and monitoring. As to the recalcitrant impaired lawyer, the appropriate professional authority is the general counsel of the Bar Association. The general counsel may invoke Rule 10 (suspension for personal incapacity to practice law) of the Rules Governing Disciplinary Proceedings (RGDP). Under Rule 10, the general counsel may initiate a proceeding to suspend the incapacitated lawyers license. If suspended, the Supreme Court will not return the lawyers license until the lawyer can prove, through reinstatement proceedings, that he once again has the personal capacity to practice law. Rule 10 means to protect clients and the public from an impaired lawyer. Rule 10 is not geared toward disciplining (punishing) a lawyer for an ethics violation. Consequently, Rule 10 is a confidential proceeding on a separate, non-public docket under the direct supervision of the chief justice. By contrast, if the impaired lawyer has already caused a harm to a client that violates the Rules of Professional Conduct, the appropriate professional authority is again the general counsel of the Oklahoma Bar Association. But now the general counsel invokes the usual disciplinary procedures in RGDP Rule 6. These disciplinary procedures are open to the public once the court clerk of the Supreme Court files the formal complaint and the respondent lawyers answer. When the general counsel becomes involved through either Rule 10 or Rule 6 in proceedings relating to an impaired attorney, the general counsel also invokes RGDP Rule 12 (winding up business of lawyer who is deceased, incapacitated or missing not pending disciplinary proceedings). Rule 12 is a relatively new rule, adopted in December 1996. Rule 12 authorizes the general counsel to exercise oversight appropriate to the circumstances to protect the impaired lawyers clients. Lawyers need courage and compassion about impairment for themselves and for fellow lawyers. Lawyers also need awareness of their ethical obligations to report impaired lawyers to the appropriate professional authority. Drew Kershen, the Earl Sneed Centennial Professor of Law at the University of Oklahoma College of Law, welcomes your comments and contributions. You may reach him by phone at 325-4699 or by mail at the OU College of Law, 300 W. Timberdell Road, Norman, OK 73019- 5081.
Back in the old days, when a lawyer or lawyers helper needed to bone up on a particular point of law, he or she would enter a place known as the “library” and consult something called a “book.” Thats the way it was in 1983 when Charles McCowan helped launch Kean, Miller, Hawthorne, DArmond, McCowan Jarman. Maybe law books arent that obsolete yet, but theyre close. Everythings gone electronic for crying out loud. “Now the bulk of people here use computerized research, except us dinosaurs who dont know how to do it,” McCowan says.
baltimore personal injury lawyers
Tags: Uncategorized // Add Comment »