Bellies to a Buzz Saw

The way the Maryland Bar Association saw it, Spiro Agnew's uncontested conviction for tax evasion, along with the lengthy list of charges that were not going to be prosecuted, clearly added up to the sort of "moral turpitude" that required disbarment. Agnew himself admitted that he deserved to be temporarily suspended as a practicing lawyer.

But, argued his attorneys, disbarment was "going a little far,"--especially since the offense involved "nothing wrong insofar as his clients are concerned." The three Maryland judges who heard the case are expected to announce their decision this week.

Whatever the outcome, the Agnew case--to say nothing of the long roster of Watergate-tainted lawyers--suggests that the legal profession has not been notably successful in preventing ethical lapses. Nor has it policed itself very vigorously. Said one disgusted delegate to the American Bar Association's annual meeting last summer: "The time is upon us, gentlemen, to belly up to the buzz saw and do something about this."

Traditionally, legal bellies have been kept far from any such teeth. As recently as 1970, an A.B.A. committee, chaired by retired Supreme Court Justice Tom Clark, examined the profession's system of ethics enforcement and found "a scandalous situation." It reported that "lawyers convicted of federal income tax violations are not disciplined, ... even after disbarment lawyers are reinstated as a matter of course, . . . lawyers will not appear or cooperate in proceedings against other lawyers ... and finally, state disciplinary agencies are undermanned and underfinanced."

The Clark committee proposed various remedies--including automatic suspension while disbarment proceedings are pending against lawyers convicted of serious crimes, a requirement that permanent records of those proceedings be kept and that disciplinary actions be publicized. As a national organization, the A.B.A. does not actually disbar any lawyer; state and local bars generally seek such action by state courts. But the A.B.A. has strong influence, and in the past three years many states have begun to heed the Clark suggestions.

Reform is coming to the bar with particular authority in California. The state will soon begin experimenting with a program to weed out incompetents by having attorneys take periodic tests. State bar authorities are currently processing some 3,000 cases against lawyers (among them, many involved in Watergate, including Richard Nixon). That is a small but typical increase over previous years. The A.B.A. began compiling rough national figures in 1965 and logged a grand total for the entire year of 216 disbarments, suspensions, reprimands and resignations under fire. By 1972 the tally was 357.

Lawyerly Lapses. For all the varied transgressions of Watergate, the principal gripe filed against lawyers is neglect of a client's case. And that can often be easily remedied by a telephone call from a local bar association. The offense that most often leads to discipline is also all too unexceptional: stealing a client's money. One Illinois lawyer who gave clients worthless checks and improper shares of personal-injury settlements was disbarred after the state supreme court determined that his actions amounted to misappropriation of funds. Attitudes toward offenses often vary. Tax evasion, for example, prompts little or no action in some states, while bringing virtually automatic disbarment in others. Similarly, a homosexual lawyer convicted of public lewdness was disbarred in Florida but was admitted to the New York bar last October.

Some lawyerly lapses defy easy classification. William Dobrovir, an associate of Ralph Nader's, recently played a subpoenaed White House tape at a cocktail party. Later, he publicly apologized. The Justice Department and the judge in the case decided against punishing him, but the D.C. bar is said to be considering censuring Dobrovir on its own. "It's my job to look into any unethical conduct whether it's formally reported or not," says Fred Grabowsky, counsel to the District of Columbia Bar.

In the past, ethics committees have often been self-protective rather than self-policing, spending much of their time battling the "unauthorized practice of law" by such laymen as real estate brokers and estate planners. The zeal to act against fellow lawyers was mostly limited to those who were political or social mavericks. When former Communist Maurice Braverman was convicted of advocating the violent overthrow of the Government, he was swiftly tossed out of the legal club. Last month, more than 20 years later, his reinstatement was recommended by a three-judge panel in Maryland, which concluded that his original conviction had been "largely political in nature."

There seems now to be a widespread acknowledgment that the bar cannot afford to back away from its new concerns. As one state bar ethics committee observed in an annual report, the profession "has a headache that cries out for fast relief. We will compound our own cure or someone will mix up a dose that will curl our hair."

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