Current Events > Alex Jones' attorney's law license is SUSPENDED

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https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/06/politics/alex-jones-lawyer-suspended-sandy-hook/index.html

A Connecticut judge suspended the law license of a lawyer for right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones after he allegedly improperly released court documents from the Sandy Hook defamation case.

The files included two years of Jones text messages, medical records from some of the Sandy Hook families and other confidential discovery items.

At a basic level, attorneys must competently and appropriately handle the discovery of sensitive materials in civil cases, Judge Barbara Bellis wrote in a court order that suspended attorney Norman Pattis license for six months. Otherwise, our civil system, in which discovery of sensitive information is customary and routine, would simply collapse.

We cannot expect our system of justice or out attorneys to be perfect but we can expect fundamental fairness and decency, Bellis wrote. There was no fairness or decency in the treatment of the plaintiffs most sensitive and personal information, and no excuse for [Pattis] misconduct.

I haven't paid attention to this kind of thing before, but before all these Trump lawyers and Alex Jones lawyers started pulling their bullshit recently, has it been this common for so many lawyers to be under ethics investigations, getting suspended, and disbarred?

Good

Good.

Fuck Alex jones

Google says that roughly 0.05% of lawyers get disbarred every year, and some random person did the math for that to come out to roughly a thousand lawyers a year.

s0nicfan posted...

Google says that roughly 0.05% of lawyers get disbarred every year, and some random person did the math for that to come out to roughly a thousand lawyers a year.

Interesting

So many people just throwing their careers away. Not to mention all the money they spent on law school.

And the stuff he leaked actually damaged his client rather than it helping him lol

CableZL posted...

Interesting

So many people just throwing their careers away. Not to mention all the money they spent on law school.

Apparently the most common reason for being disbarred is professional misconduct, which is an extremely broad category of things that basically boil down to you doing something that would make other people not trust you as a lawyer. Even if it occurs in your personal life.

Surprised it's only a 6 month suspension considering how monumental this fuck up was.

Not only did he release the incriminating texts to the other side - he was notified of the mistake and did nothing to claw it back. On top of that he seemingly didn't even inform his client who was about to be questioned about it under oath.

s0nicfan posted...

Google says that roughly 0.05% of lawyers get disbarred every year, and some random person did the math for that to come out to roughly a thousand lawyers a year.

That sounds like a lot but when you think about it, there's so many lawyers that it's not that surprising.

And a lot of those I would suspect are misconduct due to fucking up rather than corruption. "You used this evidence that you weren't supposed to legally have. As a lawyer you should know that" in copyright spat over an Undertale Fangame in Oregon

For comparison about 0.1% of Americans are rapists.

s0nicfan posted...

Apparently the most common reason for being disbarred is professional misconduct, which is an extremely broad category of things that basically boil down to you doing something that would make other people not trust you as a lawyer. Even if it occurs in your personal life.

The only thing that will guaranteed 100% get an attorney disbarred is mishandling client funds/firm trust funds. That's generally the reason why most attorneys get referred to whatever disciplinary authority has power.

We've been pretty bad at self-policing actual case-related misconduct, however. It's good to see at least some consequences for monumental fuck ups/blatant malfeasance during the course of litigation over the last couple years.

It's not hard to follow the rules.

There was a lot about this that was weird

They sent out 2 years of Alex Jones' personal data for no reason
Realized they did it and told the opposition that they did it... But then made no process to block it
Then in court didn't object when the opposition brought it up and went off for 10+ minutes

Really strange and bad lawyering

__aCEr__ posted...

And the stuff he leaked actually damaged his client rather than it helping him lol

Sounds like he leaked more than just they though

Is this the lawyer that was sitting there trying his best to not exist while Jones was being questioned about the texts?

Dude basically said screw it, I give up

PowerOats posted...

Is this the lawyer that was sitting there trying his best to not exist while Jones was being questioned about the texts?

Dude basically said screw it, I give up

Yes

Dat_Cracka_Jax posted...

Sounds like he leaked more than just they though

TO play pedant for a moment. The lawyer didn't leak it, one of his paralegals did.

Which is embarrasing and unprofessional but not the height of absurdity. Sending the wrong document is an easy thing to do, even in really important circumstances.

But the lawyer is responsible for not starting any processs to block the evidence and get the data back once he found out.

He made the oppositon aware that they sent him all that data incorrectly. Then sat on his hands and did jack shit about it. Which made the data admissible in court as evidence.