Opinion ID: 1980664
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: September 1999 through January 2001.

Text: Following the court's September 9, 1999 order of interim suspension, Ms. Soininen curtailed her practice of law in District of Columbia courts, and she discontinued her former pro bono and probate practice. However, solely upon the advice of her attorney that immigration law was administrative law, and that she therefore did not have to be a member in good standing of the Bar to practice it, Ms. Soininen continued her practice before the immigration courts. Ms. Soininen did not disclose to her attorney, prior to receiving this advice, that in notices of appearance before immigration courts, she was required to represent that she was a member of the Bar in good standing and that she was not subject to any suspension order. Moreover, although Ms. Soininen was an immigration lawyer herself, and although she had originally believed, prior to receiving her counsel's advice, that the suspension order barred her from practicing immigration law, she accepted her attorney's opinion  one that was obviously very much to her advantage  without personally looking into the issue at all. Predictably, the advice given to Ms. Soininen by her attorney, which ought to have sounded too good to be true, turned out to be fallacious. In order to be authorized to practice before the immigration courts, an attorney must be a member in good standing of the [B]ar of the highest court of any State, possession, territory, Commonwealth, or the District of Columbia, and [must not be] under any order of any court suspending, enjoining, restraining, disbarring or otherwise restricting [her] in the practice of law. 8 C.F.R. §§ 1.1(f), 292.1(a)(1) (2001). [8] Ms. Soininen thus violated this court's interim suspension order by practicing before the immigration courts. Even the most rudimentary research would have disclosed this uncontroversial reality if Ms. Soininen had taken the trouble to conduct it. During her interim suspension, Ms. Soininen also falsely represented to her clients in immigration matters that she was licensed to practice law, when in fact she was not. In retainer agreements, she identified herself as Attorney at Law, Abogado, and Esq. The last retainer agreement in which she represented herself to be an attorney in this manner was dated January 24, 2001, sixteen days after she intentionally made a false representation to the EOIR, described below, with regard to whether she was a member in good standing of the Bar. On January 14, 2000, January 18, 2000, April 18, 2000, August 30, 2000, and January 8, 2001, Ms. Soininen filed notices of appearance with the EOIR. These documents were form notices which had been completed by office assistants prior to Ms. Soininen's suspension and which were then copied for use in connection with the representation of individual clients. Each time Ms. Soininen filed a new notice of appearance, the partially completed form notice was photocopied, and the new client's name and address were added. Ms. Soininen and the client then signed the form. By signing the document, and by checking the appropriate box (or by having it checked for her), Ms. Soininen represented that she was a member in good standing of the District of Columbia Bar, and that she was not subject to any order of any court ... suspending her from the practice of law. On all five occasions, each of these representations was, of course, false. Ms. Soininen acknowledges that in the January 8, 2001 notice of appearance, she deliberately concealed the fact of her suspension and falsely represented that she was authorized to practice law. According to Ms. Soininen, she was concerned that if she had disclosed that she was not a member of the Bar in good standing, she would have been obliged to withdraw from the case, to the prejudice of her client. [9] When Ms. Soininen purposely decided, on January 8, 2001, to lie to the tribunal before which she was appearing, she must necessarily also have realized the obvious: the four forms that she had previously submitted contained the same false information regarding her bar status that she deliberately included in the fifth. Nevertheless, Ms. Soininen took no action to correct the four earlier notices, thus purposely perpetuating, rather than putting an end to, her past deceptions.