David Hale and Webb Hubbell voluntarily surrendered their licenses after pleading guilty to Whitewater crimes. Eugene Fitzhugh and Larry Kuca were disbarred. Jim Guy Tucker's license is suspended pending a disbarment hearing. Charles Matthews' disbarment is pending in circuit court. Complaints against Arkansas lawyers go through the Supreme Court Committee on Professional Conduct, a body of five lawyers and two nonlawyers.
Proceedings are secret and generally start with a complaint by one lawyer against another.
But when a lawyer is convicted of a felony, the committee's rules mandate that it seek a disbarment in the appropriate circuit court. Misdemeanors don't automatically trigger disbarment, but they can if the committee finds that a lawyer violated the state's Model Rules for Professional Conduct, an amended version of the American Bar Association's rules. The American Bar Association's annotated edition of the standard rules notes that felonies such as bribery and tax fraud generally lead to disbarment. Among seven Arkansas lawyers who pleaded guilty to charges resulting from Whitewater, two admitted to bribery, two to mail fraud and three to tax fraud. Disbarment is relatively rare in cases considered by the Committee on Professional Conduct.