Small Law Firms

Lawyer Allegedly Fakes Cancer To Get Into Law School, Delay Cases

Got a lower LSAT score than you would've liked? Blame cancer.

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Some lawyers who have cancer and are undergoing chemotherapy find themselves unable to get filing deadline extensions. Other lawyers who don’t have cancer — but falsely claim that they do — apparently do get those extensions. In fact, they even use their alleged “cancer” diagnosis to get supplement their law school applications.

Meet Vincenzo “Vince” Field, formerly of Chicago’s Loevy & Loevy, a civil rights and plaintiffs firm, who is currently in some deep doo-doo with Illinois bar disciplinary authorities over allegations that he’s been lying for years about having stomach cancer and using his purported diagnosis to do everything from explain away his LSAT score when applying to law school to delaying case deadlines that would have been blown.

The American Lawyer has the detais on Field’s decade-plus of allegedly using a fake cancer diagnosis to breeze his way through law school admission and life as a lawyer:

The amended disciplinary complaint details the lawyer’s education and career background starting in 1998, when he graduated from McGill University in Montreal, Canada. He took the LSAT for the first time in December 2005, scoring a 158 out of a possible 180. He later used that score while applying to the University of Chicago Law School, but he was denied admission for the 2006 entering class.

Field took the exam a second time in September 2006, this time scoring a 173. He again applied to the University of Chicago, including a personal statement and an addendum that sought to explain gaps in his academic record, according to the disciplinary complaint. Field wrote that he was diagnosed in 1999 with a form of stomach cancer, leiomyosarcoma, that required him to undergo several surgeries to remove tumors, radiation therapy and “countless” small procedures to deal with gastric bleeding.

He also cited the disease for his original LSAT results. Field wrote in his application that when he first took the exam, he had recently undergone a surgery and was continuing to receive radiation therapy. The law school admitted Field on his second application, but the bar complaint alleges that Field never had the disease or any of the medical procedures he described.

After Field graduated from law school, bar disciplinary authorities claim in their ethics case against him that his deceptions continued throughout his legal career. For example, in 2014, Field requested an extension on a discovery deadline after having missed work for months because he was “dealing with a serious medical issue (having tumors removed from my abdomen and stomach).” It only gets worse from there. Two years later, in 2016, Field is accused of inventing a foster child with the same sort of stomach cancer he claimed to have had when he was applying to law school. That fake foster child with fake cancer needed to have a fake emergency surgery that prevented Field from complying with a very real deposition deadline.

In his answer to the disciplinary complaint, Field admitted he lied about his cancer diagnosis when applying to law school, but that his LSAT score was due to his depression, and he “was ashamed to admit that he suffered from mental illness.”

The Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission is seeking discipline against Vince Field “as is warranted” — and given the length of time his alleged unethical behavior has gone on, much discipline may be warranted.

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Civil Rights Lawyer Faked Cancer to Delay Cases, Illinois Bar Authorities Say [American Lawyer]

Staci ZaretskyStaci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

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