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The number of registered female Illinois attorneys is on the upswing. An American Bar Association report issued last summer showed that 34 percent of lawyers are female. But Illinois surpassed that amount last year.
When the Illinois Supreme Court puts attorneys on probation, the sanction usually works.
Of the probations imposed during a 33-year period examined by the Attorney Registration & Disciplinary Commission, 239 of those lawyers — 82.7 percent — successfully completed their probations.
And they stayed out of further disciplinary trouble.
The study, issued as part of the commission’s annual report, “shows probation continues to be a successful disciplinary sanction,” said ARDC Administrator Jerome Larkin. “It gives lawyers a chance to correct bad practices or to address impairments.”
Probation “is a sanction that’s appropriate for a lawyer who should be monitored rather than suspended,” he said.
From 1981 through 2014, 9.5 percent of the 3,412 attorneys sanctioned by the Illinois Supreme Court were placed on probation. The report’s calculated completion and revocation rates do not include 20 attorneys whose probations are currently pending and not yet eligible for completion and 15 others whose probations were stayed, extended or closed due to death.
George B. Collins — a partner at Collins, Bargione & Vuckovich — said between 10 and 15 percent of the hundreds of lawyers he’s represented in discipline cases received probation as a sanction.
Probation is frequently imposed when a lawyer in disciplinary trouble also has substance abuse or mental health issues.
“It’s a great benefit to lawyers and the public in those cases,” Collins said. “It gets lawyers back into practice.”
Probation sanction conditions include addiction and mental health treatment, random testing for substances and law office management training.
Stephanie L. Stewart, a partner at Meyer Law Group LLC, said she’s represented or mentored dozens of lawyers who successfully completed disciplinary probation.
“In my experience, disciplinary cases that involve probation are more likely to settle before a contested hearing, which is economically beneficial to both sides,” she said. “Particularly where a lawyer is impaired, he or she may lack the resources necessary to proceed to a contested hearing with representation.”
The study, released Friday, also showed that 50 of the 289 lawyers eligible for probation, or 17.3 percent, had that sanction revoked over the years.
Attorneys who suffered from substance abuse, addiction or mental health issues comprised half of that total.
Those figures don’t surprise William F. Moran III, a partner at Stratton, Moran, Sronce, Reichert & Nardulli in Springfield who represents respondents and who previously worked at the ARDC administrator’s office.
“Having been on both sides of the aisle, people dealing with addiction or mental health issues really have a battle on their hands, and it’s not easy to deal with one or both issues,” he said. “Especially when you’re in such a high-pressure profession.”
The state’s high court imposed probation in a disciplinary case for the first time in 1981. In that case, the law license of James F. Driscoll was suspended for six months because he had neglected his law practice due to alcoholism. In re Driscoll, 85 Ill.2d 312.
The justices required Driscoll to make regular reports to the ARDC about his progress in the Alcoholics Anonymous recovery program.
Driscoll, a married father of four, eventually resumed a successful law practice. He was a driving force behind the Lawyers’ Assistance Program, which helps lawyers with substance abuse problems and mental health impairments.
In 1983, the justices adopted Supreme Court Rule 772, which allows for probation in cases in which an attorney has demonstrated, among other things, that he or she does not have a disability that requires transfer to disability inactive status.
A decade later, the high court expanded the circumstances under which probation can be imposed to include situations in which a lawyer’s practice needs to be monitored or limited. In re Jordan, 157 Ill.2d 266 (1993).
Last year, the Illinois Supreme Court imposed 112 sanctions on 111 lawyers. One lawyer was disciplined twice.
Those sanctions included 25 disbarments, 58 suspensions, 10 probations with partially stayed suspensions, three probations with fully stayed suspensions, nine censures and seven reprimands.
The number of lawyers sanctioned was down 33 percent from the 148 lawyers disciplined by the Supreme Court in 2013.
ARDC Deputy Administrator James J. Grogan attributed to the decrease to the “cyclical nature of the disciplinary practice.”
ARDC Hearing Board panels function as trial courts in the disciplinary process, while the review board acts as an appellate tribunal. The Illinois Supreme Court has the final say in most discipline cases.
In 2013, the ARDC administrator’s office filed 95 complaints with hearing board panels.
That action resulted in the Supreme Court imposing fewer sanctions last year, Grogan said.