Because if you can get it finalized by June 30, then you might still have the chance to be reinstated starting July 1, 2025. In this instance, PDA is short for “public disservice announcement,” not “public display of affection.” You might remember back last year I wrote about a proposed revision to the rules of disciplinary enforcement in Tennessee and my reasons for thinking it was not a necessary change.
On Friday, the Court entered an order adopting the revisions as proposed. The order mentions that in addition to comments filed by the Tennessee Bar Association, the Board of Professional Responsibility, and the Knoxville Bar Association, there were comments filed by two individual lawyers. It should probably come as no surprise to anyone reading this that all of the comments, except for the BPR’s comment, voiced opposition to the proposed changes. You can read all of the comments that were submitted here.
The Court’s order offers no explanation for why the Court thought the revision to be necessary in the first place, nor does it undertake any explanation of why it disagreed with the majority of the comments or what about the Board’s position it found persuasive, if anything. (The most effort that the Board put into its response was actually to talk at length about the Hughes case that already demonstrates that the Court had the power and willingness under the current system to refuse to reinstate a disbarred lawyer who it doesn’t feel should be reinstated.) So … disbarment in Tennessee is about to become a “forever” punishment, putting Tennessee into a very small group of states that embrace such an approach, and we still don’t know “why” the Court thought the change was needed.
Thus, on the present record, there seem to be only two possible conclusions to draw: (1) the Court simply thinks that disbarment under the current system is not sufficiently severe in terms of a penalty because it provides for a second-chance; or (2) the Court thinks that disbarment should truly be reserved only for the worst-of-the-worst offenses and that most lawyers who get disbarred should actually be hit instead with a suspension of somewhere between 6 and 10 years in length.
Which one is it? Only time will tell I guess.
One reply on “PDA: If you’re going to get disbarred in TN, get it done before July 1, 2020.”
[…] a lot of things I have written, it amounted to nothing more than screaming into the void as the changes went forward and became effective as disbarments entered on or after July 1, 2020. (Also, “Screaming into […]