A story has long persisted at the office that one of the guys was apparently an attorney in NY and was disbarred for some sort of misconduct. He will never discuss his prior career. But in the interest of putting this to rest, I would like to see if there is any way to confirm or disprove the tale.
Is it possible to get public records on disbarments in New York? How would I go about it? Write to the bar association or the department of professional licensing?
http://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/attorney/html/AttorneyWelcome.html
Includes disbarred and suspended members. No idea if it will give specifics on the cause for disbarment (if he is a disbarred attorney) or whether that is even publicly available, but should be a good jumping off point.
Ethical use of records in an office setting I think though is another thread.
It doesn’t give reasons. In California, our state bar journal publishes the disbarments, along with reasons. (When the paper comes, I while away my lunch hour reading about Things You Can Do That Are Bad, Attorney Division. Today’s lesson was about how to get disbarred for advising clients that the government has no authority to make you pay your taxes.)
Not sure how you could find out how a New York attorney gets disbarred. Billdo?
Contact the New York State Bar Association. I know someone who recently got disbarment info on a New York lawyer.
Somebody rang?
All public attorney discipline (disbarments, suspensions, public censures, etc.) is by decision of the Appellate Divison, New York’s intermediate appellate court (with possible appeal to the Court of Appeals, New York’s highest court). These decisions will include a discussion of the charges and evidence against the disciplined attorney.
I believe that all of these decisions are published in the state’s official Appellate Division reporter (currently A.D.3d), and republished in West’s New York Supplement (currently N.Y.S.2d), both of which should be available at any substantial law library. They are also available on the fee-based search services Lexis and Westlaw (for Westlaw, search in the NY-CS database). Recent records may be available online at the New York Court System Website. If you know what county he was last practicing in, you may be able to contact the relevant Appellate Division and obtain information from their clerk’s offices.
If you e-mail me the guy’s name, I may be able to do a quickie search on him to see if I can pull anything up (no guarantees).
FYI, in Ohio all disbarments are by decision of the Supreme Court of Ohio and are publicly reported, including reasons for disbarment. Sometimes those decisions can go on at some length - interesting object lessons in how not to conduct your practice.