Court Opinion

ID: 9848808
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 04:27:52.355822+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:18:47.887704
License: Public Domain

Hunstein, Justice,
dissenting.
Standard 12 of State Bar Rule 4-102 (d) prohibits a lawyer from soliciting
professional employment as a private practitioner for himself, his partner or associate, through direct personal contact with a nonlawyer who has not sought his advice regarding employment of a lawyer. A violation of this standard may be punished by disbarment.
Falanga admits he engaged in the uninvited and in-person solicitation of injured persons and grieving family members in need of legal services in violation of Standard 12 but argues in mitigation that he believed his conduct was constitutionally protected free speech. Because Falanga knowingly and wilfully engaged in conduct clearly proscribed by Standard 12, and the United States Supreme Court in both Ohralik v. Ohio State Bar Assn., 436 U. S. 447 (98 SC 1912, 56 LE2d 444) (1978) and Edenfield v. Fane, 507 U. S. 761 (113 SC 1792, 123 LE2d 543) (1993), upheld a State’s right to discipline a lawyer who engages in uninvited in-person solicitation of “unsophisticated, injured, or distressed lay persons,” Ohralik, supra at 465, I *617would disbar Falanga as authorized under Standard 12. See also Rules and Regulations for the Organization and Government of the State Bar of Georgia, Rules of Professional Conduct and Enforcement thereof, Part IV, Chapter 1, DR 4-102, Rule 7.3 (effective January 1, 2001) (also providing for maximum penalty of disbarment for direct solicitations by lawyers).
Decided July 10, 2000.
William P. Smith III, General Counsel State Bar, Jenny K. Mittelman, Assistant General Counsel State Bar, for State Bar of Georgia.