Clients' Security Board's GC retires after 30 years.

Byline: Pat Murphy

Karen D. O'Toole can count the last 30 years as time well spent given that she leaves the Clients' Security Board as the recognized gold standard for organizations dedicated to compensating those victimized by their attorneys' misconduct.

O'Toole, who recently announced her retirement as the CSB's general counsel and executive director, says her career at the board has been professionally satisfying in the deepest sense.

"Our mission is to reimburse clients whose money has been stolen by lawyers," O'Toole says, noting with pride that the vast majority of time the board pays 100 percent of a client's actual loss.

O'Toole found her calling by a bit of happenstance. After graduating from Boston University School of Law, she practiced maritime law at Hoch & McHugh in Boston. She credits her husband for bringing to her attention a Lawyers Weekly job ad for an opening at the CSB.

O'Toole got the job, originally serving as associate general counsel for both the CSB and the Board of Bar Overseers. She was appointed GC of the CSB in 2017.

The same practice areas that generated claims when she started at the CSB three decades ago are the source of a large percentage of the problems the board deals with today, she notes. The claims predictably tend to come from the practice areas in which lawyers regularly assume control over large amounts of client funds, including real property, personal injury and probate work.

The most heart-wrenching cases involve theft from a trust or estate, O'Toole says.

"The lawyer calls the children [of the client] and tells them there's no money," she says. "They're just shocked."

The root causes for most attorney theft drug and alcohol addiction, gambling problems and depression have also remained the same over the years, she says.

What has changed, O'Toole says, is a greater recognition by the bar and the Supreme Judicial Court of the stresses and demands of the...