Opinion ID: 2302531
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 47

Heading: Nicholson

Text: Nicholson is a financial advisor and a principal in Nicholson & Associates. [92] Before Davis's suspension, Nicholson hired Davis for closings and refinancing on both his primary residence and his personal investment properties. [93] One of the closings Davis handled before his suspension was for a property Nicholson purchased with Gillespie. [94] After Davis's suspension, Nicholson hired Redwood to provide the settlement packages for refinancings. [95] Davis met with Nicholson on two occasions after his suspension. [96] At those post-suspension meetings Nicholson and Davis discussed, among other issues, general economic conditions in the real estate market. [97] The Panel finds that Nicholson's testimony of having met twice with Davis and discussed general conditions in the real estate market hardly constitutes the practice of law. The ODC does not even argue that Davis gave any legal advice to Nicholson. It argues instead that the phrase or otherwise from the Mekler decision reiterating the proscription against meeting with clients means that a suspended lawyer cannot meet with a former client at all during the lawyer's suspension, regardless of the context. The language at issue is the sentence from Mekler that the suspended attorney can have no direct contact with clients or prospective clients or witnesses or prospective witnesses when acting as a paralegal or law clerk or under the supervision of a member of the Bar, or otherwise.  Id. at 26. The Panel reads that language to reflect the Supreme Court's care to make clear that a suspended attorney cannot meet with clients for the purpose of providing legal advice or in a legal setting in whatever capacity, whether acting as a paralegal or law clerk or under the supervision of a member of the Bar or otherwise. The Panel finds no support in the case law for the proposition that a suspended lawyer, for example, cannot meet with family members at family functions if the suspended lawyer had represented those family members prior to his suspension. He surely could not meet with them to provide legal advice but it cannot be that the Supreme Court intended that a suspended lawyer must be deprived of his contacts with friends and family simply because he once represented them prior to his suspension. Yet that is the effect of the ODC's proposed unduly expansive reading of that language. Similarly, the Panel does not find that language to have precluded Davis from meeting on two occasions with Nicholson to discuss, among other things, general conditions in the real estate market. Accordingly, the Panel finds that the meetings with Nicholson did not violate the Suspension Order.