Journal article
Characteristics of Lawyers Who Are Subject to Complaints and Misconduct Findings
T Sklar, Y Taouk, D Studdert, M Spittal, R Paterson, M Bismark
Journal of Empirical Legal Studies | WILEY | Published : 2019
DOI: 10.1111/jels.12216
Abstract
Regulators of the legal profession are charged with protecting the public by ensuring lawyers are fit to practice law. However, their approach tends to be reactive and case based, focusing on the resolution of individual complaints. Regulators generally do not seek to identify patterns and trends across their broader caseloads and the legal profession as a whole. Using administrative data routinely collected by the main regulator of the legal profession in Victoria, Australia, we characterized complaints lodged between 2005 and 2015 and the lawyers against whom they were made. We also analyzed risk factors for complaints and misconduct findings. We found that the odds of being subject to a c..
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Funding Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge the Victorian Legal Services Board and Commissioner for funding this research, with particular thanks to Commissioner Michael McGarvie, Russell Daily, Maggie McNamara, Christine Bell, and Abrahim Dahdoule, for their guidance in extracting the data and interpreting the findings. We appreciate helpful comments and suggestions from David Hyman, Bill Madden, Jennifer Moore, Jordan Neyland, Christopher Robertson, Brad Wendel, Emily Taylor Poppe, Lisa Webley, and workshop participants at Melbourne Law School, New South Wales Law Society, Georgetown Law School O'Neill Institute, the 2017 Conference on Empirical Legal Studies, and the 2018 QuantLaw Conference at the University of Arizona College of Law.