Respondent Marshall C. Watson State Bar No. 741737 is a member of the Florida Bar and was admitted to practice law in Georgia in 1984. Watson filed a petition for voluntary discipline pursuant to Georgia Bar Rule 4-227 b after the Supreme Court of Florida entered an order suspending him from the practice of law in that state for 91 days for his admitted violations of Rules 3-4.3, 4-1.1, 4-1.3, 4-3.2, 4-3.3 d, 4-5.1 a-c, 4-5.3 b-c, and 4-8.4 a and d of the Rules Regulating the Florida Bar. See Florida Bar v. Watson, 2013 Fla. LEXIS 1115 2013. For the reasons that follow, we grant the voluntary petition and suspend Watson from the practice of law in Georgia for 91 days nunc pro tunc to June 5, 2013.
In his petition, Watson asserts that in Florida he maintained a high-volume foreclosure practice representing lenders, but admits that he failed to take reasonable steps to supervise and train his employees. During the height of the national foreclosure crisis, Watson’s firm was at one point handling over 66,000 cases with 71 lawyers and 597 support staff. Watson admits that his firm employed an attorney to sign Affidavits of Reasonable Fees in foreclosure cases and that many such affidavits were signed by that attorney outside the presence of a notary public, and without review by the signer of the data and information contained in the affidavits. Although the Florida Bar agreed that it had no evidence that the fee amounts in the affidavits were not reasonable, Watson admits that he violated the Rules Regulating The Florida Bar for failing to have procedures in place to insure the integrity of the execution of the affidavits. Additionally, as a result of Watson’s failure to properly supervise the policies and operating practices for his law firm, some of his attorneys missed 22 case management conferences and failed to timely cancel foreclosure sales or pay clerk fees in five cases. Also, before 2010, Watson’s law firm had a practice of filing unverified foreclosure complaints alleging in the alternative that the note was lost, without confirming that the client-lenders had in fact lost the note. Finally, Watson’s firm failed to take reasonable steps to notify the court and opposing counsel when associate attorneys left his employ and to update the case files with the appropriate attorney of record. Watson admits that these actions violated the above-referenced Rules Regulating The Florida Bar.
