CA bar suspends 1,600 attorneys for violating rules set up after Girardi allegedly stole millions

[Jirel]

4. At least half are probably quite ethical.

The systems that some states use for this are a mess. I was technically out of compliance in one of the states I was barred in, because of that. My state keeps a list of IOLTA accounts. If for some reason there is a glitch and your account isn’t on it, or shows closed (which can happen due to various clerical or electronic errors), you literally can’t update your IOLTA status. For going on a year, I was pestering the human staff (2 people for the whole system) to fix the account status so I could bloody update it. Nothing. They were perfectly nice on the phone and over email, but they never got around to it for months.

With a new system like this, I’m sure they’re having plenty of glitches, not to mention the usual reasons these things get screwed up, from a law firm admin who’s tasked with doing everyone’s screwing it up (this was another terror when I worked at a firm - they wanted you to submit I do to THEM every year for updating the liability insurance and IOLTA status), to lawyers mostly retired or leaving practice who didn’t “get around to it” because they do do little legal work at this point, they aren’t keeping up. The latter isn’t a great excuse, but it happens a lot.