This Lawyer Was Lucky…But I Wouldn’t Try This Trick At Home

This article, Winning As Your Own Lawyer, NY Lawyer (9/15/05) reports on one of the unusual instances where a lawyer represented himself before a disciplinary board – and won!  From the article:

In 2002, Ziegler took over the defense of a robbery charge against a member of a family he had represented for years, even though he didn’t do much criminal law. But when Ziegler failed to negotiate the noncustodial sentence he thought the client deserved, and the client couldn’t pay for a trial, he sought to hand the case back to the public defender’s office.

Union County Superior Court Judge James Heimlich ordered Ziegler to try the case and wouldn’t grant a postponement. When Ziegler said no, the judge held him in contempt and the District VB Ethics Committee said he violated RPC 1.16(c), failing to continue representation when ordered to do so by a tribunal.

Ziegler, representing himself, won his appeal before the Disciplinary
Review Board, which found that because the public defender’s office had
been willing to take the case back, Ziegler shouldn’t have been forced
to  proceed.   It probably didn’t hurt that Ziegler had an unblemished
39 year legal career.

Still, it’s unusual for lawyers to prevail when they represent
themselves in their own disciplinary actions.  For starters, it’s too
easy to get too close to one’s own case, especially when the case
involves attacks on your professional judgment or conduct.  Moreover,
when representing yourself, you spend so much time justifying your own
actions that you can be potentially blindsided by other arguments that
might be meritorious.

Self representation before a disciplinary board also looks bad.  It
conveys one of two possible impressions:  (a) that you don’t have the
resources (or the malpractice insurance) to hire a defense attorney or
(b) that your case is so sorry that you couldn’t find someone to take
it.  In addition, as we’ve pointed out in past posts, marshalling support from other lawyers at a disciplinary hearing can improve your chances of success.

Ziegler deservedly won his case, but many of us may not fare as well if
we were to come unrepresented before a disciplinary board even in a
slam dunk case.  But if you have malpractice insurance, you’ll never
have to suffer that fate:  most policies will pay for a lawyer to
represent you in disciplinary charges.  In my mind, that’s probably the
best reason to pay for malpractice insurance.