Philadelphia City Hall building. Photo: Diego M. Radzinschi/ALM

When the Disciplinary Board of Pennsylvania held its first round of public reprimands for the year, it did so in a spacious courtroom in Philadelphia City Hall, as dozens of lawyers watched from the gallery.

With sun pouring into the big window, portraits of retired judges looking down, and a view of the Romanesque spires of the Masonic Temple across the street, the courtroom in 602 is a significant venue change from the small, enclosed Disciplinary Board offices where public reprimands have previously been held.

The move is part of the Disciplinary Board's efforts to make public reprimands more weighty.

"Oftentimes doing it in that room in the Disciplinary Board's offices was not really conducive to the fact that we were actually administering discipline," board chairman Andrew Trevelise said. "We felt it would be more meaningful and more appropriately done if it were done in a courtroom."

According to Trevelise, along with changing the location of where the reprimands are meted out, the board also decided to perform the public reprimands in conjunction with the Disciplinary Board's meetings, which means the events should be attended by at least the majority of the 13-member board.

Nothing about the way the hearings are conducted, the way disciplinary cases are evaluated, or notices about the reprimands are posted have been changed, Trevelise said, noting that the public had always been able to attend public reprimands when they were held at the board's offices.

However, he said, it was rare that people would attend the reprimand sessions, and typically only the three board members tasked with administering the reprimand would attend.

Although the board recently hired attorney Thomas Farrell as new chief counsel to fill Paul Killion's role after he retired following 17 years with the board, Trevelise said the changes with the public reprimands had nothing to do with the new chief counsel, but rather had been discussed by board members for a while before being implemented at the start of this year.

"People would look at it and say it just doesn't look like it's very meaningful to do it the way we're doing it," Trevelise said. "It is serious, so we decided to do it this way."

On Wednesday, 10 members of the Disciplinary Board sat on the bench, with nearly 30 lawyers in the gallery, many of whom were also members of the board's hearing committee. Four lawyers who had been found to have violated disciplinary rules were on the schedule to receive public reprimands—Stuart Lundy, Ann Miller, Sandra Thompson and ex-Marshall Dennehey Warner Coleman & Goggin lawyer Timothy McMahon.

For each lawyer, a different member of the board read out the alleged facts of their disciplinary case and outlined the disciplinary rules that were found to have been violated. After their cases were read, most of the lawyers left the room. Each declined to comment.

Swartz Campbell attorney Jeffrey McCarron, who represented Thompson, said most of those in attendance were members of the board's hearing committee, and questioned how many would continue to show up to the public reprimands. The most significant part of the public reprimand, he added, was that it remained on the attorney's public record.

"I don't think [the location change is] genuinely going to achieve anything," McCarron said.

Public reprimands are the most severe type of punishment administered by the board itself. Censures, which are the next step up in terms of severity, are administered by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court during its oral argument sessions, and more severe punishments, including suspensions and disbarments, are ultimately decided by the high court. Along with public reprimands, the board also administers private reprimands, which are not made public and will continue to be performed at the Disciplinary Board's offices.

Over the past three years, the board has typically ordered and administered between 15 and 20 reprimands each year.