More things not to do if you’re a practicing lawyer, all from recent Law.com reports: Don’t abscond with the down payments that your real estate clients have laid down on houses, as 19 New York attorneys apparently could not resist doing last year (John Caher, “Light-Fingered Lawyers Cause Spike in Client Fund Payouts”, New York Law Journal, Apr. 17). Don’t “[hum] ‘The Twilight Zone’ theme song to imply a client’s ex-wife — seated at the same table during a post-judgment divorce proceeding — is mentally unstable,” which drew a reprimand for Torrington, Ct. attorney Steven H. Levy (Douglas S. Malan, “Attorney Gets Static for ‘Twilight Zone’ Rendition During Divorce Proceeding”, Connecticut Law Tribune, Apr. 13). And if you’ve gotten caught in a colorful episode of legal malpractice in which you falsely claimed (among other things) to have founded an L.L.M. program at New York University School of Law, don’t engage in “elaborate and sometimes fraudulent efforts” to avoid paying the judgment to your former client, for which offense federal judge Denise Cote requested that the U.S. attorney’s office prosecute New York lawyer David A. Dorfman (Tom Perrotta, “Federal Judge Requests Prosecution of Attorney for Criminal Contempt”, New York Law Journal, Apr. 19). More in our “Don’t” series: Aug. 3 and Sept. 13, 2005; Jan. 20 and Apr. 12, 2006.

Filed under: Connecticut, divorce, ethics