Legal ethics violations have expanded exponentially over the last generation, undermining the Rule of Law and even democracy itself.

By 1993, Yale Law School Dean A. Kronman prominently warned in his book, The Lost Lawyer, that, “Every year produces … renewed doubts about the ability of the profession to police itself.”  Today those doubts have become certainties, with Bar Enforcement Authorities (BEAs) in 48 states having literally never enforced the profession’s purported Honor Code (Ethics Rule 8.3) and virtually never enforced Rules 1.13 (disclosing within and sometimes outside of an organizational client), 1.6.b-e) (privilege exceptions), and other critical Rules (e.g., 3.1’s prohibition on bad faith assertions).

The failure to enforce these Rules has exponentially increased the volume and expense of litigation; undermined access to justice; and eroded the Rule of Law.

Enron reforms ignored. The Rule of Law crisis we see today did not arise suddenly. A decade after Dean Kronman’s warnings and in express response to public outcry following the lawyer-complicit, Enron-related fraud, the ABA and all 50 states exponentially expanded lawyers’ disclosure requirements. Disclosure mandates that were previously limited to extraordinarily rare events — a client’s intent to cause another substantial bodily harm — were expanded to include bodily or financial harm, future or past. Despite that expansion and as noted, BEAs have undermined the expansions by simply ignoring them in all but two states. In some states, failures to enforce are not only kept from the broader Bar and public but are not appealable to anyone … even to the State Supreme Court (the entity that wrote the Rules and mandated the expansions).

Three States. As just examples of the problems but also of possible improvements, RTL’s website focuses on three jurisdictions: DC, California, and Vermont.  D.C. because of its heightened importance to democracy; California because, in the wake of a 2023 enforcement scandal, it enacted a new and particularly strong Rule 8.3 ; and Vermont because — in response to its own 2023 scandal — (revelations that its Rule 3.1 alone is violated over 1,000 times per year and witnessed by a third of the Bar has also never been enforced) its BEAs its have gone so far as to violate the Rules 3.1 and 8.3 themselves to avoid enforcing them.