Attorneys take note – and for that matter, dissatisfied clients as well. The Florida Supreme Court ordered Thursday that professionalism complaints against attorneys will now be subject to local “professionalism panels” that will determine if complaints get sent to the Florida Bar for further action.
Reacting to this decision, Miami attorney Barton Sacher sent an email to local reporters deeming it “The Jackass Rule”, and prompting South Florida Business Journal writer Paul Brinkmann to solicit feedback from more attorneys.
To Sacher, these panels will relieve judges of the unpleasant duty of regulating attorneys. The Court expressed that the crisis of unprofessional conduct among Florida attorneys in the mid-1990s has been at least somewhat mitigated by a campaign to halt the decline in standards, but that “significant problems” are still apparent.
In its unanimous opinion, the Court stated that surveys of lawyers and judges continually suggest that professionalism “is one of the most significant adverse problems” impacting the practice of law in Florida today.
Instead of attempting to codify an entirely new code of professionalism, the Court instead required that each circuit Chief Judge create a professionalism panel to receive and resolve professionalism complaints — informally, if possible.
