The impact of a corrupt attorney on an individual and society.

Lets start by identifying what we mean by "corrupt attorney". We have the ones who are overtly corrupt, stealing from and deserting their clients. Then we have others who practice in the gray area's, they know their boundaries, show up in court, file papers and able to identify a case that will give them the greatest profits. For these, if they have a client going for a small suit and one going for a larger suit they will choose the larger, this is profitable and there is little incentive to aid the lesser client. I make the lack of incentive claim based upon our experiences in Virginia. In 2000 my girlfriend's attorney stole settlements and deserted their clients, because of our situation I looked into what we could do and noticed that the Virginia State Bar had changed their policy from addressing things like integrity, competence, diligence (Code of Professional Responsibility), to avoiding it (Replacement of the 'Code of Professional Responsibility' by 'Rules of Professional Conduct') which avoids addressing attorney strategy. When such a grievance is filed the Bar responds that it does not address "strategy" complaints, it then claims that its members are diligent but if one wants they can retain another member to address the failures of the previous members - this costs. The expected outcome of this implementation is that the individual will "drop the issue" and allow the fraud to continue.

Having said that I can state that the corrupt attorney is like a bull in a china shop, their failures have a multifaceted impact. It immediately impacts the individual. The obvious impacts are that the individual goes to jail and loses assets. There are other prices paid by the individual for the failures of retained counsel, emotional trauma/psychological, credibility, self confidence, trust in others, employ ability and job retention. We will not consider an individual that "created" an event or situation with intent. We will also disregard the immediate impact that incarceration and a negative judgment will have on an individual. What remains is the emotional and social stigma attached to one that is caught up in events.

The individual seeks a non violent means to resolve a dispute so they retain a "professional" to address their problem. When this "professional" betrays them for whatever reason the individual has doubled their problems, the issue and the "professional" who chose not to diligently represent them. The solution provided by the profession is to "hire another professional" or "drop it". There is pressure on the individual to drop the issue. The first approach is to tell the damaged individual that it was the others "strategy". The next is to claim that there are "some" bad apples out there but most are diligent, when pressed for proof of this claim one discovers that there is no foundation to it. Usually when anomalies are pointed out in conversations with professionals, they shrug and make the blanket "strategy" claim, that it would be hard to prove, that it would cost. Of course it is hard to prove, this is performance. The intent is that the damaged individual is to "drop the issue". In my girlfriends case she was bankrupt and injured, she could not afford to address both the "injury" and the "deserting attorney" issues, she was expected to drop them, my girlfriend had a mental breakdown instead, this was one price she paid.

When the process was started the individual expected that "business" or "profit" from service would result in competent counsel. The clients expects that the "professional" will use the material provided to support their case. There is also the expectation that one is "innocent till proven guilty". When they walked into the attorneys office the client knew the circumstances that required they retain counsel. The client expects that they have retained a certified professional to represent them, that one who would use what is available to represent the client. There is also the expectation that the institution called the Bar would ensure a quality performer, that it would be proactive in ensuring diligence in the legal theater, this is performance and even games such as Football maintain statistics on its players.

The attorney makes a risk assessment of the individual, did the individual have the assets to become a threat. Is it profitable to represent a client competently or to process many clients minimally, following the volume paradigm. Other factors may come into play also, such as personal bias or religious factors that may slant their representation. An example of personal bias would be that the counsel will overlook items that support the case because they may consider their client a "sinner", poor and unworthy of competent defense. This profession without oversight is an ideal niche for discrimination to hide because so many excuses can be made for failed performance a bad play, a ball dropped, a hard case, made a mistake, there are a myriad of excuses for "dropping the ball". Word of mouth is not a deterrent, this is because the "professional" will represent "clients of choice" diligently so those individuals will sing accolades about their best friend that bailed them out of a bad situation, the others will have "sour grapes", they were not "clients of choice" <wink>. With the <wink> they will point to the TV where it is identified that everyone claims innocence. To the claim the programmed response is "sure you are not guilty". What if one is innocent ? Consider someone convicted of child abuse who never did, what protects them from the corrupt attorney, who drops the ball ? Without giving some sort of voice to a damaged individual trends and performance failures cannot be identified.

In an attempt to offset the costs and document their position, identify resources and anomalies the client may write up an outline. The outline may contains such things as doctors, therapists, documents supporting their position, video or lack of witnesses to the attorney. After retaining the attorney the client might wait expecting a call or meeting to discuss the outline contents, the call never comes. So they go to court and are told by their attorney, when they can catch them between cases to plead guilty, the choice is to fire the attorney in the minutes before court and attempt to find another "competent" counsel or ride the train and hope that it does not crash. Then there is the long term case where opposing counsel makes statements that are refuted by documents in ones hand yet the retained attorney pats the clients hand and says "professional courtesy", the client hopes they have a strategy. The case is lost, the client loses assets or goes to jail and the attorney goes on to process another.

The result is that the judges or jury never heard the details of the case, in fact it is possible that no one does - "sure you are not guilty". If the retained counsel presented the material it could alter the outcome of a case. Would years of documented spousal abuse affect a judgment ? How about police reports ? Video's ? Documents soliciting assistance, social services housing, food stamps ? If the court never hears about this material a fair judgment cannot be made on the case.

Betrayed the client wonders what happened, they discover that no one was contacted, doctors, therapists, witnesses, store video or documents obtained to establish the merit of their information. They try to call their attorney with no response to the messages or worse they try to call the attorney from jail to discover that they have an answering machine but one can only call collect from jail, answering machines do not accept collect calls. One tries to obtain a video from the store on their own to prove their innocence, the store delays, avoids the issue and time passes before they are told that the store cannot provide it. Having fought for years and being told to accept that an attorney lost their case, cost them years of anguish, they accept the "drop the issue" and then another issue comes up as a result of the original failure. Friends and associates have long since deserted, not because of discrimination but because they can afford to do other things. When one approaches assistance groups they want payments, not a viable option when one has no resources to consume on frivolous activities.

Another avenue attempted is to contact an attorney that claims to address "legal malpractice", when they talk to them the response is that it was the attorney's "strategy" and their list of supporting material is dismissed as such. The client gives up and expects to make a complaint to someone, the certifying agency, the Bar, seems like a good prospect to file such a grievance. At this time one discovers that the institution does not maintain grievances, does not know how many other clients were processed or how many were represented. If the client looks deeper they will find that the agency changed their policy from addressing strategy issues to dismissing them. It dawns on the client that there is no effective oversight of this profession, there is nothing to ensure quality representation. Would the next attorney the client needs deem them not a "client of choice" also ? What would be a "strategy" that would provide a favorable outcome when addressing the next issue ? The client is left wondering how many others were processed, are they the exception or just another drop in the bucket. The institution avoids collecting this information. Therefore if one is concerned about an attorney who happens to drop the ball for economic, gender, ethnicity, religious, personal bias or even "bad hair days" the information is not there. Winning or losing cases is not effective because it is performance and a good attorney who takes the hard cases may not win, only "customer satisfaction" would identify performance "trends".

A client that is not of choice will attempt to alter their track record with attorneys, go to "legal/attorney" newsgroups and present the trends that they have experienced. They expect several outcomes from this, to communicate their experiences and maybe a "professional" would rise from the population worth actually retaining. Instead the client is called names, told that they were stupid, that the case was lost because of their mistakes and that they should see "mental health professionals". When the client confronts these naysayers and says "prove me wrong" here is my material, do what the courts were supposed to do, there is silence. Kicking harder the client is told to "get over it", they are told it is not worth the effort. This means that "professionals" in this theater do not care about "service" it is all about the "scam", the victim is told to "get over it", that they lost. So who cares about such concepts as "integrity of the profession", "presumption of innocence" and "due process" ? The days of Perry Mason are over, course his "client of choice" tended to be clients of Caucasian descent. The show "Law and Order" is quaint fiction, imagine a prosecutor upset about ethics.

We have gone through ten attorneys so far, my girlfriend has a disorder where she says things backwards, it was for this reason that I presented an outline of her situation. None of the items in the outline were reviewed, this was identified because one item consisted of contacting her mental health therapists. When I communicated to these "professionals", identifying that they had not researched the case they would get incensed and state that my girlfriend was their client, even though I was paying the bills. Occasionally I listened to them outline their "game plan", it sounded like a con, strategy with no foundation, words delivered without the conviction that would be present if the "professional" had researched the case. I usually take a walk, an idiot that is not invested is still better than none when addressing the idiot on the bench. In one situation where I was in on a meeting we started discussing the date of an incident, knowing that it occurred prior to both my and my girlfriends son's birthday. In that meeting as we were discussing the date, the attorney walked out of the office, I called after him stating that it was relevant, he nodded and continued walking. When he returned we mentioned that the date was at another time, the attorney did not make note of this discussion. At the time of the meeting we had no warning of the issue, the event had occurred two years prior, it was forgotten. The date would have put the suit outside of the "statute of limitations" and the case would have been dropped. When my girlfriend filed bankruptcy to escape from this attorneys failures, this was the one event that really stood out but the trustee of the court said that the attorney told them that they did not have any note of the discussion so there was no malpractice. Later my girlfriend found a record of it in her diary and the prior attorney would have had record of it also. We have observed that these "professionals" execute such "strategies" when dealing with clients that are not of choice, their choice is predatory, get the buck and dispose of the client - presume them guilty.

Trying to "get over it" is easier said than done because circumstances cascade. For example my girlfriend was bankrupt after five years of legal battles and questionable representation. Her mode of transportation was walking, while she was walking she was bitten by a neighbors dog, five years later that attorney deserts, five years after that my girlfriend has a breakdown and a doctor mis-administered medication which resulted in another incident, those attorneys told her to "plead guilty", did not contact the therapists or mention the mis-administered medication to the courts.

I cannot put names to the psychological aspects of betrayal and denial by professionals intended to represent them. The inability to do anything about such betrayal, the avoidance of the subject, the knowledge that one may not be a "client of choice". Frustration and anger, the knowledge that one cannot expect to be represented competently. My girlfriend who has survived rapes, assaults, injury, harassment, stalking, attorney betrayal, attorney desertion hears the words court or attorney and breaks down crying, she is very tired. This represents the toll on the individual.

Consider the stresses on the individual, my girlfriend goes nearly comatose, crying and falls into depression. Others would vent their anger and frustration in other ways, ranting or violence. What "strategy" is implemented by the disenfranchised, economically weak individual/populations ? Does "getting over it" result in escapism, into illicit substances, risk taking by distribution of illicit substances. An individual getting caught taking risks feeds this machine. How much social dysfunction can be attributed to poor attorney performance, strategy, no one knows, the metric is not maintained. Consider also who is protected when an attorney chooses not to be diligent, a corporation, corrupt government - a poor performer can also be the prosecutor. The client may not be able to afford an extensive battle but they should expect that what they do have is used and presented to the courts for a judgment. I have brushed upon the collective impact on society of a population of many individuals, many drops in the pond.

What social structures are fed by this implementation. Following the money we have jails, law enforcement, courts, attorneys and education for careers as law enforcement. Social programs that act as a parachute are being decreased and disenfranchised in a fear society. With an implementation that dismisses strategy failures there is no mechanism to ensure that the individual is protected. What diligence is executed depends upon the whims of retained counsel and as a result reduces a court of law to the court of whimsy.

Another point of interest is when Virginia State Bar's change of policy occurred, 2000, the year that President Bush was elected along with the anomalies that coincided with the administration. For example one year I was assaulted by the police and the Bar's the policy implementation dismissed my complaints of failed representation as "strategy". I could not obtain the store video of the assault that would have either supported my case or refuted it. If the video supported my case I could have used it to solicit another attorney for an appeal and possibly a malpractice action. If it did not I would be able to laugh at the stupidity that resulted in incarceration and damaging my retina. This was not a big thing, as a Marine I have dealt with worse, however it highlights a problem with the legal profession and supports the position stated in this article. We are seeing a lot of "services" being dismantled, the legal profession is a service that is supposed to protect the individual from an over zealous government, is it ? Is the Virginia State Bar's policy change just another component of a disenfranchisement trend ? Just where does the individual stand in today's society ? With the policy change the individual lost their leverage over the retained attorney, what was the intent ?