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Article V § 15 of the Florida Constitution
gives the Florida Supreme Court the exclusive jurisdiction to regulate
the admission and discipline of attorneys. Since the admission of
attorneys to practice law is administered by the Board of Bar Examiners,
the Florida Bar can be charged only with the discipline of attorneys.
The Florida Bar reports receiving over 9000 complaints annually for
the last several years, against the ever increasing number of Florida
lawyers which now numbers in excess of 71,000. Of these complaints
annually, only about 4 out of a hundred or about 4% result in any
action. In more than half of these cases the discipline consists of a
mere slap on the wrist. The complaints are received in five branch
offices, Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, Orlando Tampa and Tallahassee. An
assistant staff counsel reviews the complaints who then rejects most of
them. Therefore, 96 out of a 100 complaints never get to the Florida
Supreme Court and so the seven Justices never see these complaints. Some
of these attorneys are publicly disciplined and many of the attorneys
who are suspended are later reinstated, and many disbarred attorneys are
later readmitted. Most of the cases that result in discipline is because
of theft of trust accounts. Obviously, if these were not pursued by the
Florida Bar, they would result in some form of criminal prosecution.
For the Florida Bar disciplinary statistics for the past ten years up to
and including the year of 2003
Click here and it
continues. See, the complaint that big firm attorneys escape discipline
and it is oriented to small firms and single practioners
Click here.
The Jacksonville [Florida] Bar Association
a Professionalism Committee created the Judicial Sanctions Information
Collection (JSIC) Subcommittee to increase the Bar membership awareness
of unprofessional conduct that is frowned upon by judges. To see what
that is Click here.
Each State has a Bar, and you can get
information for making complaints against attorneys at:
http://www.hereinreality.com/fightback/attorney.html
The 2006 Halt study on Lawyer Discipline
reveals a nationwide pattern of toothless sanctions, unnecessary
secrecy, biased procedures and endless delays shown in their
.
The disciplinary function of The Florida
Bar is only the tip of the iceberg. The Bar conducts and sponsors
programs that venture into areas beyond its authorized activities of
disciplinary proceeding, continuing legal education and unauthorized
practice of law. Fully more than one half of the Bar's yearly budget is
consumed by these other matters. Many programs that the Bar provides
such as, lawyer referral, group legal services, lawyer advertising,
public relations (which produces public service announcements for radio
and TV, pamphlets), group legal services among them the Florida Lawyers'
Prepaid Legal Services Corp., law office management assistance service,
member benefits, fee arbitration, client security fund, certification,
legislative and lobbying program, judicial polls, malpractice insurance
through the Bar created Florida Lawyers Mutual Insurance Company and so
forth are not related at the very best distantly related to the
constitutional mandate. Nevertheless, these programs are supported from
the state mandated membership dues and other revenues collected by the
Florida Bar. It is noteworthy that, the Florida Lawyers Mutual Insurance
Company, a for profit corporation, was initially funded with $500,000
from the Florida Bar, a non- profit corporation.
Legislation and lobbying activities are a prime function of the
Florida Bar. Since the inception of the Florida Bar, The Board of
Governors has sponsored major reforms in the substantive law of the
State. The leadership of the Bar characterizes itself as "speaking with
one voice" for its entire membership on political subjects. Some of
these matters were directly related to the administration of justice,
some were totally unrelated to the administration of justice and others
were political in nature. The Florida Supreme Court defends these
activities on the ground that, Bar integration grew out of the necessity
for an organization that could speak for the profession in esse.
(26)
The Florida Supreme Court denied the petition of dissenting members of
the Bar, who sought to amend the Integration Rule to prohibit the Board
of Governors from engaging in political activities on behalf of the Bar
and from expending funds for these purposes.
(27) The court took the
position that, the Florida Bar actively participated in worthy
legislative causes, among them to restrict the appellate jurisdiction of
the Florida Supreme Court, to implement the merit system of retention of
the appellate judges and the creation of the Judicial Qualifications
Commission and of the IOTA program interest on trust accounts. These
efforts obviously were instrumental in maintaining the power of the
judiciary. Some of the results are that, the appellate court judges are
no longer elected and virtually sit for life and investigation of
judicial misconduct is conducted in secret and is stifled.
A federal appeals court ruled that the bar's lobbying activities are
more accurately viewed as that of labor union, as partisan politics and
not that of an impartial recommendation of a governmental entity.
(28) The court based its
opinion on the fact that, both the union employee and integrated bar
members are required by law to pay a fee and that the difference between
a union and the integrated bar is so small that the same rational would
apply to the legislative and the lobbying activities of both.
Additionally, The Florida Bar sponsored under direction of its
directors and officers and employees a non-profit organization, the
Florida Lawyers Association for the Maintenance of Excellence, Inc.,
(FLAME), to promote legislative activities deemed by the Board of
Governors to be beyond the sphere of the Bar. However, no FLAME funds
were expended for lobbying and legislative activities since its
inception.(29)
It is obvious that like a department store that has to have
merchandise to sell in its various departments, members of the Bar have
to create laws in various areas to keep the litigation mill going and
the fees coming. So, laws are created to provide for attorney fees and
for further fees by leaving wide discretionary powers for the judiciary,
to litigate issues ad infinitum. Often the defendant is compelled to
payoff the plaintiff in so-called "settlements" for financial inability
to continue the litigation until the suit is proven to be without merit.
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