Office of Bar Counsel

• Jurisdiction: Wyoming,United States
• Citation: Vol. 38 No. 3 Pg. 12
• Publication year: 2015
• Pages: 12
• Year: 2015

Office of Bar Counsel Vol. 38 No. 3 Pg. 12 Wyoming Bar Journal June, 2015

Mark W. Gifford Bar Counsel.

Generational Trends in Attorney Discipline

At what point in a lawyer’s career is he or she most likely to become the recipient of a disciplinary sanction? Is there any statistical relationship between a disciplined lawyer’s years in practice and the nature of the misconduct, or the severity of the sanction?

Since 2001, more than 1,500 complaints have been submitted to the Office of Bar Counsel, resulting in 150 disciplinary orders (private reprimands, public censures, suspensions and disbarments) being issued to 124 members of the Wyoming bar. Seventeen attorneys have received more than one disciplinary sanction; two attorneys have four apiece.

The accompanying pie charts showing the distribution of disciplinary sanctions over the course of lawyers’ careers provide an interesting, big-picture view. Notice how similar the charts are for lawyers with five...