State Bar of Texas building State Bar of Texas building in Austin

A partnership between two San Antonio attorneys ended very badly in 2019, and now the State Bar of Texas announced both attorneys' law licenses were suspended.

Jami Nance and Jonathan Mason are both solo practitioners now, after their former firm Nance, Mason & Associates dissolved amid the fallout of an Interest on Lawyers Trust Account scandal that left both attorneys pointing fingers at each other.

The bar has now announced the one-year fully probated suspensions against Nance and Mason for failing to safeguard client funds in their trust account and failing to take action against each other to remediate the problem.

Those sanctions are just two among a list of 24 disciplinary actions against 23 Texas attorneys that the state bar released publicly for January. The sanctions included one resignation, 14 suspensions, two public reprimands and seven private reprimands.

The judgments against Nance and Mason explained that Nance was representing a client in a divorce and received nearly $138,000 from the sale of the family home. The lawyers were supposed to safeguard those funds until the parties agreed how to split them. But when that agreement came, and Nance wrote a nearly $78,800 check to her client, the check bounced.

Both lawyers failed to hold the funds separate from their own property. Also, both of them permitted the other partner to violate attorney disciplinary rules without taking remedial action to ensure their clients' money was being safeguarded, the judgments said.

Nance said that she never made any transfers from the firm's IOLTA account, and she accused Mason of making the transfers while she was working remotely from Belize.

"A lot of people accused me of embezzlement, which didn't happen at all," she said. "I blindly trusted, and I shouldn't have."

Yet on the other side, Mason accused Nance of overspending in her personal life and then using the law firm's general operating account to charge personal expenses. He alleged her spending left the account with insufficient funds, and Mason said that he made transfers from the IOLTA account so he could pay business expenses to keep the firm running.

"I got stuck between a rock and a hard place, because, do I not pay our clients' filing fees, and continue to help our clients, or move funds from an IOLTA account?" Mason said.

Mason said he had only been practicing law for one year at the time. Because of the discipline case, the bar required him to take continuing legal education courses to learn the proper way to handle law firm operating and IOLTA accounts.

"Looking at the bright side, I'm glad I will know the right way to do it, going forward," Mason said. "I'm never going to have any other attorney attached to my operating account."

Other Disciplined Attorneys

Here is a list of other Texas attorneys disciplined for lawyer misconduct, along with links to the underlying disciplinary judgments in their cases. Scroll down for a brief summary of all of the cases.

Resignation

James P. Brady of Houston

Suspensions

Public Reprimands

The Texas Bar also issued private reprimands against seven attorneys, according to the January attorney discipline list.

Read the discipline list: