Dallas Personal Injury Attorney
Q.Dallas attorney Bruce Patton has a clean disciplinary record, according to the State Bar's Web site, which provides profiles of the state's 80,000 or more practicing attorneys. But consider this before you hire him to draft your will: Patton is in state prison after being convicted of a felony two years ago. Would you be curious to know whether the personal-injury lawyer you're interested in hiring is careful not to bill you a dime too much? The firm of John O'Quinn, one of the state's wealthiest personal-injury lawyers, was ordered by an arbitration panel this summer to pay $35 million to former clients who say he overbilled them for expenses, but no mention of that order is on the Bar's Web site.
A.Key aspects of the oversight system for Texas lawyers could leave the public vulnerable, a Star-Telegram review found. The Texas Legislature and Supreme Court, which share a role in establishing ethics rules for attorneys, have made it so that the public stays in the dark about thousands of lawyers accused of misconduct. Bar confidentiality rules ensure that many sanctions are private and that lawyers accused of felonies can continue practicing. The Bar doesn't require attorneys to report their criminal record or malpractice suits. Bar officials say that protecting the public is an important role for the Commission for Lawyer Discipline, the Bar's primary disciplinary arm. "The very big concern is making sure that we protect the public from lawyers that are abusing the public trust," said Betty Blackwell, chairwoman of the commission. But that doesn't mean the general public has to be thoroughly informed of lawyer discipline, she said. Representatives of the public sit on the board of the Bar's disciplinary arm. So "even though this may not be made public, and the public as a whole may not know what happened, it has been reviewed by public members," Blackwell said. "That's the point." The limited publicity also reflects the commission's other priority: sparing attorneys from needless embarrassment. Under today's rules, the public is not told if an attorney is being investigated, or the number or nature of any grievances that are dismissed against an attorney. So the Bar won't say whether it is considering sanctioning Patton, whose jail term ends next month. Its Web site says only that he is inactive.
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