Opinion ID: 2448503
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Initial sanction determination

Text: ABA Standard 6.21 provides that disbarment is appropriate when a lawyer knowingly violates a court order or rule with the intent to obtain a benefit for the lawyer or another, and causes serious injury or potentially serious injury to a party or causes serious or potentially serious interference with a legal proceeding. By failing to respond to the Bar's subpoena, Rice intended to obtain the benefit of delaying and impeding the Bar's investigation; his delay which arguably lasted from the time of the Bar's initial records request up through the present, given his continuing failure to produce some of the requested information caused serious interference with the investigation and the formal proceedings that followed from it. Disbarment is therefore a permissible sanction under ABA Standard 6.21. Under ABA Standard 4.12, [s]uspension is generally appropriate when a lawyer knows or should know he is dealing improperly with client property and causes injury or potential injury to a client. Rice's actions caused at least potential injury to his clients. It also appears that, consistent with the Hearing Committee's findings, his misappropriation of client property was knowing; Rice knowingly paid himself out of client trust funds without having properly invoiced clients for services (regardless of whether he believed he had earned the payments), thus violating his fiduciary duties. The initial sanction indicated under ABA Standard 4.12 is suspension.