Misconduct allegations against Louisiana lawyers were up in 2015, but fewer people have been filing formal complaints against their attorneys. Charles Plattsmier tells Business Report the second part of that trend makes him happy.
“Any time I see the number of written complaints that come into my office go down, that’s a cause for celebration,” says Plattsmier, chief disciplinary counsel for the Louisiana Attorney Disciplinary Board, in a feature from the current issue.
Each complaint represents someone who is dissatisfied with an attorney. And each complaint contains one or more allegations of ethical misconduct, which could include anything from lack of communication to flat out incompetence.
For example, a client might complain that his lawyer isn’t talking to him enough, that the case is taking too long, and that, after discharging the attorney, he hasn’t gotten his documents back after a few weeks. An LADB lawyer would identify three allegations in that complaint: lack of communication, neglect of the case, and failure to return files. So the tally is three ethics allegations from one complaint.
But regardless of the number of allegations, each complaint represents a dissatisfied customer, so the number of complaints is the more important statistic, Plattsmier says. While 2,955 complaints in 2015 is a “stunningly large number for a state our size,” he says, that total still represents good news, because it’s the first time in a decade that fewer than 3,000 complaints were filed. He’s not calling it a “breakthrough,” but says it’s encouraging that fewer clients, judges and other lawyers are filing complaints with his office.
And while the number of complaints has been fairly steady over the past 10 years, generally falling between 3,000 and 3,200, the percentage of lawyers with complaints filed against them has been declining, driven largely, though, by the growth of professionals in the field. The total number of lawyers has gone from less than 20,000 to almost 22,000, Plattsmier says.
Of course, many allegations turn out to be unfounded. Plattsmier says the recent increase in the number of allegations could just be a statistical anomaly, or could reflect more meticulous cataloguing by his staff.
Mark Cunningham, president of the Louisiana State Bar Association, says the allegation increase reflects more careful screening by the Office of Disciplinary Counsel.
“It is an aggressive enforcer,” he says. “[It] is looking at the ethical rules very broadly to make sure that they capture every possible violation.”
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