The Statewide Grievance Committee is sitting on dozens of complaints against Connecticut attorneys. And thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, it might not address them for months.

The office, which closed on March 30, has a skeleton staff working twice a week to review newly filed complaints, according to Statewide Bar Counsel Michael Bowler.

"We date-stamp the complaints, then review and hold them until we reopen," Bowler said, except in cases of emergency.

The end result: 77 complaints as of Thursday afternoon on hold.

Mark Dubois, the state's first chief disciplinary counsel, said the situation is unfortunate, but there's no way around it.

"There is no playbook for this kind of thing, so you make it up as you go along," said Dubois of Geraghty & Bonnano in New London. "They want to err on the side of safety, which I fully endorse, having had the virus myself."

Dubois continued: "It's important to note that the lawyer discipline process in Connecticut is one of the fastest in the country and the fact that we will get a few months behind is not a big deal in the grand scheme of things."

Still, Dubois said, there are many anxious complainants and attorneys who might not know the outcome of their case for months. Dubois estimates the office can gets between 50 and 100 complaints a month, but more than 90% are dismissed.

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'The wait grinds on you'

The current health crisis is no one person's fault, Dubois said, but for attorneys accused of misconduct, "justice delayed is justice denied."

"The attorneys are the ones that will really suffer here," said Dubois, who represents lawyers facing ethics charges and allegations. "They will have to wait it out. The wait grinds on you. I tell a lot of my lawyer clients that the complaint is the first thing they will think about every morning and the last thing they will think about at night until it's resolved."

The advice for attorneys facing disciplinary charges from Connecticut attorney Jamie Sullivan is: Do not represent yourself.

"The fool's lawyer is the lawyer who represents himself," said Sullivan, a partner with Howard, Kohn, Sprague & FitzGerald in Hartford and co-author, along with Dubois, of "Connecticut Legal Ethics and Malpractice."

"Unfortunately, half the lawyers do represent themselves," Sullivan said Friday. "It's because they are either a fool or they do not have the resources to hire a lawyer. It's not a good idea to represent yourself because you can't look at the case objectively and there is emotion involved."

But with regard to the backlog of cases, Dubois is confident the office can handle it, based on the past performance of Statewide Bar Counsel and his team.

"When Mike Bowler became Statewide Bar Counsel 17 years ago, we had a backlog that went back years," Dubois said. "He cleaned it all up. He can do it again."

One way to help clear the backlog: Dubois suggested bringing in "one or two really experienced judges when things reopened to try and mediate these cases and to see if they could be moved to disposition."

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