The Terrifying Reality Of Receiving Your First Bar Complaint

“Congrats! You popped your cherry!”

angry manThere is no more terrifying, gut-wrenching, palm-sweat-inducing, dry-mouth creating, personal-anguish-creating moment for an attorney than receiving a bar complaint. Bar complaints, even frivolous ones, create long term effects. Just one can make receipt of the annual envelope containing mundane renewal paperwork from the Board of Bar Examiners induce instant anxiety. Over the course of my eight years in the practice of law, which has included substantial practice in the two most common areas of the law to generate bar complaints (family and criminal law), I have only received one bar complaint. I am knocking on all wood within a 50 foot vicinity, spitting, twirling, throwing salt over my shoulder, etc.

Oddly enough, the complaint in no way related to family or criminal law. And, unlike the vast majority of complaints, it was filed by the party-opponent not my client. It dealt with a perfectly appropriate and statutorily correct, although perhaps a bit aggressive, mechanics’ lien I filed on behalf of my client on the party-opponent’s home for work done to the home. You see, the total overdue invoice was less than $100.00. But my client had tried for some time to collect and had been met with ongoing resistance, including a fairly lengthy Better Business Bureau Complaint by the homeowner against it.[1]

While I apprised the client that the cost of our work would quickly exceed the value of the overdue invoice, they determined that a mechanics’ lien was the preferred route to send a message to the homeowner (and other general contractors and sub-contractors in the area), especially with the statutory entitlement to attorneys’ fees. So, I filed the lien. The party-opponent, despite his considerable anger paid to discharge the lien (and the attorney’s fees and interest).

Two months later I sat in my office and received a call from my wife, who was at that time my girlfriend. She had returned from work and checked the mail. She told me that a letter was in the mailbox from the Board of Bar Examiners. I went silent. She could tell that something was wrong. She asked if I wanted her to open it. I said yes. Internally (or perhaps aloud) I asked why they would send it to me at home rather than the office. That just seems like a dick move. She read it. It was, as I worried, a Bar Complaint. I am certain that I went pale as my heart dropped like a foul ball from Steve Bartman’s hands.[2] I ran home at well quicker than 5K pace. I read the Complaint. I hesitated for a long time on the first page. I read the name on the Complaint several times, trying to place it. Rifling through client names in my brain rolodex, I could not place. I continued to read.  Oh, it wasn’t a client. It was… this guy… seriously, this guy?

Over the next couple of hours, I quickly moved from fear to anger, back to fear, returning to linger on anger. In a (brief) moment of rationality, I convinced myself (in reality I am relatively certain that my wife convinced me) that I needed to sleep on it before I penned a response. I returned to work. For whatever reason, I told nobody. I closed the door. I tried (unsuccessfully) to do real work. Eventually realizing that was futile, I penned a response. I left work that evening and went to have a few beers. I did not sleep at all. I turned the case over and over in my head. As I often do any time I write something, I mentally wrote and re-wrote the response on the inside of my eye-lids.

The next day, defeated, I exhaustedly walked in to talk to the partner who occupied the office next to mine. I showed him the Complaint. He reviewed it, looked at me and chortled. I briefly contemplated choking him. He then bellowed, “Congrats! You popped your cherry!” He explained to me that the Complaint was garbage and I had nothing to worry about. He said it was a badge of accomplishment. I told him that it was the shittiest badge anyone has ever received.[3] Once again, I rewrote the response, he reviewed it. We sent it off. I put it out of my head, and two months later I received another letter from the Board of Bar Examiners determining that at all times I had acted ethically and properly and dismissing the Complaint. At the end of the day, the Complaint process works, and is a necessity of our profession. But I’ll be damned if it doesn’t make you wish you did something else for a living, like bookbinding, or rabbit raising or taxidermy.

[1] Hmmm…perhaps this should have been a harbinger of what was to follow.

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[2] See Cubs fan, this is ok now!

[3] Far shittier even than these.


Atticus T. Lynch, Esq. is an attorney in Any Town, Any State, U.S.A. He did not attend a top ten law school. He’s a litigator who’d like to focus on Employment and Municipal Litigation, but the vicissitudes of business cause him to “focus” on anything that comes in the door. He can be reached at atticustlynch@gmail.com or on Twitter

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