While Connecticut attorneys found a multitude of ways to end up in ethical hot water between January 2014 and August 2019, some bar rules proved trickier than others.

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Seven rules were akin to land mines, accounting for more than 1,800 alleged violations in the roughly five-year period.

The most evoked rule in grievance complaints was Rule 8.4, governing attorney misconduct, which appeared in 453 charges.

Andrew Berman, a partner at Young, Berman, Karpf & Gonzalez/courtesy photo

The rule has a storied past, including a test of its constitutionality in a case that reached the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. The challenger, attorney Mark Villeneuve, was suspended and later disbarred after the Connecticut Workers' Compensation Commission, where he interviewed for a staff attorney position, discovered lies on his resume. Villeneuve later sued state and federal defendants, challenging the facial constitutionality of Rules 8.4(3) and 8.4(4) under the First and Fifth Amendments. But the court disagreed, finding both rules "pass constitutional muster."

Safekeeping property violations under Rule 1.15 appeared more than 300 times, while nearly 200 fee disputes resulted in ethics cases.

Not keeping in touch with clients—a violation of Rule 1.4—was a major stumbling block for attorneys, cropping up on 315 occasions.

"There's no reason to have communication issues today if you're alive and in good physical and mental condition, because it doesn't take much to just push a button and forward something," said Andrew Berman , a Young, Berman, Karpf & Gonzalez partner in Miami who represents clients in high-profile bar discipline cases and who has given lectures on ethical pitfalls for attorneys.

Since Berman started practicing law before the proliferation of cellphones, he's noticed clients now expect faster and more frequent communication. But it's also a lot easier to meet those demands, because attorneys can often forward every piece of electronic correspondence straight to their clients.

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Ethics and white-collar defense attorney Brian Tannebaum said that while most attorneys assume trust account violations make up the bulk of lawyer-discipline cases, communication issues are way more common, while violations involving diligence—or the failure to work on a case—are cropping up more and more.