Sunday, July 8, 2007 | 7:07 a.m.
John Shook, vice chairman of the Nevada State Bar's Client Security Fund, had come to his wit's end.
The security fund, which reimburses clients who have been ripped off by their attorneys, found that 21 attorneys, most from Las Vegas, had stolen $1.2 million from their clients during 2004 and 2005.
Yet the lawyers who the fund concluded were crooks - sometimes they admitted the theft - never were criminally investigated or prosecuted.
The Clark County District Attorney's Office has prosecuted only two such attorneys in the past decade , none since 2002. Local police departments have told victims that the theft wasn't their concern. It is a civil matter, police say, so they might consider filing a lawsuit.
So, Shook wrote state Attorney General Brian Sandoval, noting that other states had addressed the problem by designating specific prosecutors to go after thieving lawyers.
"Recognizing the problem with the police department and/or the District Attorney's Office of Clark County," Shook wrote on Oct. 21, 2005, "I would request your help in finding a simple and effective way to ensure that victims of this attorney fraud are heard and the attorneys are prosecuted."
Neither Sandoval nor anyone else in his office ever responded.
This may not be surprising given the legal environment in Nevada, a state where citizens file ethics complaints about their lawyers at a higher rate than in almost every other state and where only a small percentage of attorneys are disciplined by the state bar.
According to statistics collected by the American Bar Association from 2002 through 2005 , an average of one complaint each year was filed for every five licensed attorneys in Nevada. That's twice the national average.
For example, 1,362 complaints were filed with the State Bar of Nevada in 2005, when there were 6,321 active licensed attorneys in the state. Only Arizona had a higher lawyer complaint rate.
Yet only a small percentage of these allegedly wayward attorneys are taken to task.
Though 5,032 complaints were received by the state bar from 2002 to 2005, only 198 attorneys were sanctioned. Seventeen were disbarred.
The ethical standards for lawyers are laid out in the Nevada Supreme Court rules. Lawyers who violate them are subject to different sanctions: a private reprimand that is kept on file at the state bar; a public reprimand that is published in local newspapers, sometimes accompanied by a fine; suspension of the lawyer's license for up to five years; and disbarment.
Clients with grievances can file an official complaint with the state bar. The bar counsel's office reviews the complaint to determine whether it raises an ethical issue and can ask the lawyer to respond.
A screening panel then decides whether the case should be heard by a disciplinary board. If the complaint has no factual basis - or wouldn't constitute misconduct if true - the complaint is dismissed.
When a complaint is referred to a disciplinary board, the bar can convene a formal public hearing. The Nevada Supreme Court needs to approve all disbarments and suspensions before they go into effect.
Some recent disbarments of Las Vegas lawyers have made the news, including those of:
In one prominent case, none of the parties walked away pleased with the outcome.
Several former clients filed complaints about Las Vegas bankruptcy attorney Randolph Goldberg. Two claimed they had lost their homes because Goldberg or his assistants had not completed legal work with the government in time.
Goldberg signed a conditional guilty plea on Aug. 5, 2005, in exchange for agreeing to a public reprimand from the state bar. At a subsequent hearing, Goldberg said he didn't agree with what was stated in the plea agreement, which prevented it from going into effect.
After another formal hearing, the disciplinary board decided there were no grounds for formal disciplinary action against Goldberg.
Assistant Bar Counsel Phillip Pattee noted in a letter that the panel cautioned Goldberg regarding his ethical obligations regarding fee levels, speaking truthfully during legal proceedings, and monitoring the scope of his representation with clients.
Goldberg said he didn't go forward with the conditional plea because he had felt pressured into signing it, and didn't think everything in it was accurate. He chastised the bar for prosecuting what he called a nonexistent case and for not trying to hear his side of the story.
"They don't check out any of the client's claims," Goldberg said. "They just assume that anything the client says is true."
Clients Patti Merkt and Paul Malignaggi disagreed.
Merkt said she was bitterly disappointed with the outcome of the bar's discipline process, and that the disciplinary board was predisposed to find in favor of Goldberg. She said she wanted to sue Goldberg in civil court for legal malpractice, but six attorneys she brought the case to turned her down before the statute of limitations ran out.
She said losing her Las Vegas home, where she had lived for several decades, was devastating, especially because she took the correct steps to prevent it from happening.
Malignaggi did file a civil suit against Goldberg, and trial is set for February. Malignaggi, production manager for the Frank Sinatra Jr. concert tour, said he thinks he'll have better luck bringing Goldberg to justice now that the case will be heard by jurors instead of a disciplinary board full of lawyers.
"I can't wait to get him in court before 12 civilians, as opposed to four lawyers and one civilian," Malignaggi said.
Rew Goodenow, the outgoing state bar president, said the bar's lawyer discipline process isn't perfect, but that officials are serious about holding lawyers in the state to high ethical standards.
"We regulate lawyers here in the same manner as in other states," Goodenow said. "And we prosecute discipline cases here as aggressively as in other states, if not more so."
According to Deputy Bar Counsel David Clark, the main purpose of the state bar's disciplinary process is public protection, not punishment. But he noted that the rules are getting tougher.
For example, rules implemented in March make future disbarments irrevocable. Nevada had allowed attorneys to apply for reinstatement three years after they were disbarred. That's still the case in 40 of 50 states, Clark said.
Goodenow and Clark said they don't know why clients in Nevada appear to be considerably less happy with their lawyers than in other states. They were reluctant to conclude that there simply are more bad lawyers in Nevada.
But Shook, the Las Vegas lawyer who works with the state bar's Client Security Fund, said the obvious conclusion may be the right one.
Shook and other local attorneys offered several possible explanations.
Many attorneys advertise here and run firms that focus more on the number of clients they can bring in than on the quality of the service they provide.
Lawyers, like others here, are more often drawn into addictive behaviors.
There are a smaller percentage of high school - educated citizens in Las Vegas than in other cities, which sometimes allows these clients to being taken advantage of.
"There's no doubt that the dynamic of a boomtown affects everything about the place," Shook said.
Other officials with the fund - which is separate from the bar's discipline process - confirmed that they have no direct relationship with Las Vegas police or prosecutors, and that it can be a source of frustration for them and the victimized clients.
Sometimes, the security fund will wait until any bar disciplinary proceedings are over before deciding to go forward with a claim against an attorney.
Metro Police spokesman Bill Cassell said the cases that had been brought to his agency from clients who had dealt with the Client Security Fund were civil matters.
In some cases, Cassell said, police have consulted with prosecutors, who have confirmed that they need not go forward with an investigation.
Eric Jorgenson, head of the Clark County district attorney's major fraud unit, said in turn that he hasn't seen such cases referred to his unit from Metro to prosecute in the past couple of years. He said he's open to talking more regularly with state bar officials about possible suspects.
His boss, District Attorney David Roger, said his office relies on police to conduct investigations into such matters. If they brought him a strong case, he said, he wouldn't shy from prosecuting it.
"We have charged police officers, firefighters and elected officials," Roger said. "We are not going to turn a case away because the suspect is a lawyer."
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