New York State has the most lawyers of any state in the USA with over 191,000 licensed attorneys but according to the recently released 2009 American Bar Association Survey on Lawyer Discipline Systems New York lags the nation in enforcing attorney ethics codes. New York is the last remaining State (besides Connecticut) to fund attorney discipline from tax coffers yet New York spent less that 16% of what California spent to discipline the behavior of attorneys. In 2009 New York spent approximately $8.3 million of legislative appropriated tax dollars to oversee 191,000 lawyers as compared to over $52 million of court assessed fees that California spends to discipline 169,000 lawyers or $11 million that New Jersey spent from Supreme Court user fees to oversee 68,000 attorneys. New York spent a paltry $44 per year of taxpayer money per attorney on discipline in 2009 as compared to over $300 of court user fees that California spent in 2009 on attorney discipline.
Though New York lags the nation in funding the attorney discipline system and has the most antiquated taxpayer funded sytem of any large state the picture across the USA is bleak for attorney discipline. The USA in general does a surprisingly poor job of handling the discipline of attorneys. In 2009 the report shows that from over 1.4 million lawyers in the US 36,703 faced an ethics complaint but a scant 5,502 faced a discipline penalty. This means that Less than 1% of lawyers in the country were found to have acted unethically. While these statistics are nationwide averages no state has drastically different percentages of disciplinary actions or reports of ethics violations.
Attorney behavior is governed by ethical codes created by State Bar Associations but enforcement of these codes varies from State to State. New York lags the nation in attorney discipline with the New York Bar Association Code of Ethics enforced by the taxpayer funded Grievance Committees of the Court of Appeals. In California attorney ethics codes are enforced purely by the Bar Association with funding coming from the members of the Bar while in New Jersey enforcement of attorney ethics codes is left to a division of the Supreme Court which funds attorney discipline via court fees. All States are similar in the attorneys are free to operate without fear of discipline committees unless they embezzle money, commit a felony or perform some other crime repeatedly.
A fair and open court system is an underpinning of democracy and clearly the US needs to step up its enforcement of the ethical behavior of attorneys. Any discipline system that punishes less than 1% of its population is not a deterrent to unethical behavior nor is it offering effective discipline of its members. Consider that most corporations try to shed their bottom 5% performers each year, greater than 2% of the population is victimized by violent crime and attorneys are obviously human. Many US citizens find their lives wrecked by the misbehavior of attorneys and attorneys have quite a bad reputation in the US. Certainly if there is a statistic that shows why attorney’s are so maligned in the US the fact that less than 1% of attorneys will face a disciplinary action in a year shows that attorneys have little to fear for unethical behavior.
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