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Mark Dubois' best advice to attorneys is simple: Don't be afraid to ask for help.

Dubois spends his days defending attorneys facing ethics charges as part of his practice at Geraghty & Bonnano.

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But before that, he was Connecticut's first prosecutor of lawyers.

His biggest tip to attorneys: Don't let personal and professional struggles balloon into ethics charges.

"If you are overwhelmed, find a colleague who can give you some advice," he said. "If you are a young lawyer, there are mentors out there."

3 tips from Mark Dubois

  • Sit with a bookkeeper to get financial records in order. "When you are really busy running around between courts and closings, it's hard to remember there is the business of law and the practice of law," Dubois said.
  • Use malpractice insurance to pay for ethics representation. Attorneys who need help sometimes don't realize this is an option, Dubois said.
  • Treat the Connecticut Bar Association's ethics committee as a resource. "There is a whole body of ethics opinions out there via the CBA," Dubois said.

The ex-disciplinarian says he now fields weekly attorney calls for assistance, once from an overwhelmed and weeping man facing a random financial audit. Dubois referred him to a expert who helped the lawyer "work … through the forest."

"They need a little guidance and I give it to them," said Dubois, who estimates he prosecuted more than 1,000 cases and supervised thousands more during his eight-year tenure as Connecticut's first chief disciplinary counsel. "I tell them which rule of professional conduct is applicable."

One of the gravest errors is sloppy bookkeeping.

"The rules require you to have your fiduciary account, or IOLTA, balanced to the penny," Dubois said. "If you don't, it could be a career-ender."

 

'What they don't know'

In a law career that has spanned about four decades, and included stints as a full-time law professor and president of the Connecticut Bar Association, Dubois has seen three types of attorney-discipline cases.

Former Connecticut Chief Disciplinary Counsel Mark Dubois.

"Before the [2008] recession, there were two groups: sociopaths and lawyers in midlife crisis or midcareer crisis," Dubois said. "After the recession, there was a new group, and that was attorneys making mistakes out of ignorance and inexperience. We saw more young people who needed mentors and schooling, as much as discipline."

Cash-strapped, laid off and facing business challenges as client spending tightened in a declining economy, some lawyers tried to fend for themselves. They attempted to launch businesses, hanging up shingles and creating small or one-person firms.

But that left them vulnerable to new predicaments.

"We saw many problems with young lawyers on their own in an unsupervised practice," Dubois said. "They don't know what they don't know."

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Up until 2006, young lawyers would work in established law offices where they would get training and "learn the ropes," Dubois said. But as entry-level positions disappeared amid layoffs and hiring freezes, associates sought alternatives, which sometimes led them to appear before the state's disciplinary counsel.

"They opened their own practice and made mistakes out of ignorance," Dubois said. "It was a big shift. When we started, most lawyers in trouble were middle-aged and older. When we finished, we had a lot of lawyers that were younger."

The fallout meant an influx of prosecutions for a relatively new disciplinary office.

 

Shifting approach to discipline

Connecticut was late to appoint a chief disciplinary counsel to prosecute cases involving fellow attorneys. But when it did in October 2003, then-Chief Connecticut Supreme Court Justice William Sullivan made the goal of the office loud and clear.

"The marching orders from the chief justice was to get rid of the really bad attorneys and help everyone else," said Dubois, who was the state's first chief disciplinary counsel, serving from 2003 to 2011. "The focus was to get rid of the people who were threats to the public. If they were stealing money or were a threat, get them out of the practice."

Connecticut was among the last states to create an office to prosecute attorneys. Before that, clients and others had little recourse regarding ethics allegations against lawyers.

"People who filed complaints had to also prosecute their own cases," Dubois said.

The lack of a prosecutor allowed unscrupulous lawyers to often keep practicing longer than they should have.

"They were the worst of the worst," Dubois said.

The early days included rigorous prosecution, which evolved into compassion for rule-breakers wrestling with mitigating circumstances.

"We'd help them find treatment, and if they had a bad business model, we'd hook them up with a mentor," Dubois said. "Our feeling was that none of us is perfect. We all make mistakes, and even the best of us will mess up once in a while."

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