Small Law Firms

That Is Definitely One Way To Lose Your License

Who even thinks to mess up like this?

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dunce stupid moron stupidity LF RFBecoming a lawyer can be a great career choice. Using some of your earnings to invest in a business is also a smart move. Not sure where doing coke off your employees without their consent ranks in the Better Business Bureau’s list of best practices, but it has to be somewhere far below personally running with scissors and encouraging your chefs to take advice from Google AI on how to keep cheese on pizza. If this lawyer would have kept his nose in a BBB book instead of doing drugs off his personnel, he might still have his license. From ABA Journal:

A New York lawyer convicted in 2008 for allegedly licking cocaine off a waitress at the nightclub that he owned was disbarred last week partly for his conduct in a civil lawsuit that followed.

The Appellate Division’s Second Judicial Department of the New York Supreme Court ordered the disbarment of lawyer Gaurav Malhotra, also known as Gary Malhotra, of New York in a May 15 opinion noted by the Legal Profession Blog.

Malhotra was disbarred based on allegations in two ethics cases. One stemmed from the 2008 criminal conviction. The other stemmed from Malhotra’s failure to respond to subpoenas in the waitress’s civil suit and his failure to satisfy the $1 million default judgment that she obtained.

For Malhotra to do what he did and sit on the civil lawsuit, you’d think he must have had some stellar justification for his inaction:

[Malhotra] later told a grievance committee that he considered the woman’s allegations to be “pretty silly,” and he had created an environment that made him an easy target.

There’s a lot going on here, but a defense isn’t one of them. If you knew that you created an environment that would make you an easy target, why wouldn’t you immediately start, I don’t know, working and managing in a way that would clear your character? Maybe prevent a culture that would enable you or your agents to misbehave so egregiously? That’s almost as stupid as exhibiting grooming-adjacent behavior for years to then pretend you fed someone false information in a globally popular rap beef, but at least Drake still has his day job. If you knew that you were convicted of a charge that carries a higher burden of proof, why would you sleep on a million dollar civil case with a lower burden? Learn to focus, people!

New York is down a lawyer, but I get the feeling the City will manage.

Lawyer Disbarred Following Alleged Cocaine-Licking Assault On Employee At Nightclub He Owned [ABA Journal]

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Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s.  He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at cwilliams@abovethelaw.com and by tweet at @WritesForRent.

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