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KingCast Public Service Reminder, or Watching the Detectives: Investigations at the Massachusetts Board of Bar Overseers are supposedly confidential.

By Christopher King

So the other day some tool wrote in and stated that a specific Attorney who is a friend of mine is being investigated. This I find fascinating because it represents a clear cut security breach and violation of protocol from the very quasi-State agency or organization purportedly in charge of policing Attorney protocol, so I says to the tool, I says:

Vigro what's I'm axin' is whether or not there's been a charging Petition of Misconduct, because otherwise it seems that if there is some BBO investigation going on, you have been privy to information to which you shouldn't be, or you work for the BBO itself, either way you're in the wrong, he-heh.

And it's really black and white, no two ways about it, here is the BBO Website.

Effective July 1, 1993, the SJC made significant changes to its rule governing the procedures for attorney discipline. The diciplinary(sic) proceedings now become public 20 days after a lawyer is served with a petition charging misconduct. The BBO posts a scheduling of hearings at its offices.

If a lawyer has been convicted of a crime, the BBO will likely schedule a hearing to determine if disciplinary action is in order. The BBO will furnish reporters with the date, time and location of the hearing and the hearing will be open to the public.

All the rest of the activities of the BBO are confidential. The BBO will not inform the press if a lawyer has been informally admonished or received a private reprimand. It will not confirm if a particular lawyer is, or has been, the subject of complaints or investigations.

It's fascinating: LE, the Government or quasi-government folks can violate the law, procedures and protocol (even remove spent casings from a crime scene) at their whimsy and without recompense, but let them get ahold of someone who challenges the system in any way and they will try to have them drawn and quartered at dawn and float "confidential" information on them.

KingCast: Watching the Detectives.

Full post as published by Chris King's 1st Amendment Page on February 24, 2010 (boomark / email).