The Florida Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously decided to disbar attorney Anthony Wayne Blackburn this week and the result would seem inevitable given the accusations against Blackburn of trading lower fees for sex with two incarcerated women. What is surprising is that the Florida bar actually wanted only to suspend Blackburn for the misconduct, a shockingly low penalty for an attorney accused of a shocking abuse of the attorney-client relationship.
Blackburn was arrested in 2016 and accused of soliciting sexual relations with an incarcerated client by depositing money in her bank account. He was also accused of soliciting sex with another woman by offering discounted or free legal services. He pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor battery charge.
Despite his guilty plea and seeking treatment, Blackburn still committed a fundamental abuse of his professional relationships. Moreover, he exploited a client’s difficult situation to seek to coerce sexual relations. Yet, the referee recommended an 18-month suspension. It is hard to see such a suspension as fitting this level of what the Florida Supreme Court described as “sever moral turpitude.”
Here is the opinion: Florida Supreme Court/Blackburn decision
Quick, go on line and tell the world that you think we have the greatest POTUS ever and keep doing it until Trump gives you a pardon.
So once again “being screwed by a lawyer” plays out in real life.
That pretty much sums up three paragraphs in one sentence.
Same as the casting couch stuff. Just men hunting over bait. The truth is though, that there are lots of women who are quite happy to swap some loving for material benefits. Heck, I have girl friends who would hop in the sack if the dude paid for the drinks at the bar. The alcohol kind of bar, not the judicial kind.
Whew, I am sooo AFU right now that I can hardly type and make coherent statements. Am I being coherent here???
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
I’ve been wondering where you’ve been lately. Has composing limericks fried your neurons?
No, I have been changing computers over, and getting set up to sit outside with Snagglepuss, the Cat, who likes to sit in places other than the patios or porches, or around the pool. Sooo, I spend a lot of time under one of the trees, and behind one of the sheds, and just plain out in the middle of the yard where I can’t use my laptop, yet.
But, I am working on it. Plus, I ordered a bunch of fakebooks and I have been busy learning new songs.
I am maybe frying my brain smoking tobacco that has Perique in it. Because I swear that stuff makes me loopy. I smoked some last night late, and I could barely type and form sentences.
But thank you for worrying about me!
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
It’s the 99%of the lawyers who give the 1% a bad name. Jonathan Turley is among the 1%; most of the bar associations are among the 99%
As a person who works in the legal field, if you think lawyers are bad, you oughta get a load of our clients!
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
About 1/3 of those admitted to the bar cannot find work in the profession and decamp to other venues. Some do so because they dislike the mundane practice of law (see both Obamas).
See Gregory Mankiw on the income distribution in the legal profession. Lawyer’s incomes are bimodally distributed. Mankiw’s interpretation of this is that it’s functionally two professions with distinct career paths.
It’s a trust-invested occupation and a certain share of people are unworthy of your trust. You need vigorous action to weed-out the bad apples. My own suspicion is that scamming shysters are an ancillary problem. The more serious problem is the amount of rent-seeking the legal profession does and the hopeless inefficiency of court systems. See Mark Steyn on the comparative experience of civil litigation in American, Canadia, and British courts
Michelle Obama spent only three years working as a lawyer, following law school. She then held several non-law jobs for the Univ of Chicago, and subsequently became a high-end housewife. In all, a total waste of a Harvard law degree. (Although about what one would expect of an undergraduate degree in Sociology and African-American Studies.) Her brother, Craig, also majored in Sociology at Princeton and became a basketball coach.
Sociology can be an engaging discipline, and, if you emphasize quantitative methods in your study, a potentially useful one. Academic degrees don’t map precisely to any line of work. That’s what distinguishes them from occupational degrees. Not sure why you fancy a student of sociology who lands a berth in a law school is less competent a student than some other student who lands a berth in a law school.
I agree that sociology CAN be an engaging discipline, but in the case of Michelle Obama, her studies do not appear to have been particularly rigorous. Her senior thesis was on “the black experience at Princeton,” for which she interviewed other black students and alums. Wow. She was quite fortunate to have an opportunity to study at Princeton, but she wasted that opportunity in essentially choosing to study about herself.
If you compare Michelle O. with Rod Blagoyavich, you see two people with similar working class Chicago roots. Her father worked for the city Water Dept and her mother was a secretary. His father was a laborer at a steel plant and his mother was a ticket-taker for the subway system. Michelle had the benefit of affirmative action; Rod, whose parents emigrated from Serbia nine years before his birth did not. Michelle studied soc and A-A Studies at Princeton and there is no record of her working for compensation during those years. She then went to Harvard Law and spent about 3 years as an attorney at Sidney Austin before dropping out. Rod majored in history at Northwestern. During summers, he worked on the Trans-Atlantic Pipeline, as a pizza delivery guy and an amateur boxer. He went to a lower-ranked law school, Pepperdine, but worked as a successful felony prosecutor in Chicago before embarking on his political career. So all in all, I see him as somebody who worked hard, made his own way, and actually achieved something with his legal education. I think Michelle was the beneficiary of affirmative action and took the easy route throughout her studies and career. Blagoyavich obviously made some mistakes, but up to that point, he was a far more accomplished person than M.O. could ever dream of being. I haven’t looked at any stats, but based on my own observations and experiences in hiring and supervision, most black lawyers drop out of the profession. The federal government is filled with Ivy-educated black lawyers who had a very short stint at a white shoe law firm, then dropped down to a government management position. I guess it bothers me because I see it as a total waste of a legal education, and wonder what the possibilities could have been for hard-working, blue collar and poor whites who were displaced by affirmative action students.
most black lawyers drop out of the profession
I had not heard that. Any ideas on why that might be the case?
I don’t know, and as I said, I haven’t seen any stats on the issue, so it may be that what I have observed is more reflective of blacks with Ivy League degrees and is result of the “mismatch theory” of affirmative action. For example, we have a black male lawyer who graduated from a low rated college with mediocre grades, but nonetheless was admitted to a Georgetown Law. After six months at a top law firm in D.C., he was let go, presumably because he couldn’t keep up with the work and/or the brutal hours. So he gravitated to a government management position, which is a relatively relaxed, 9-to-5, $150,000 per year position. This, of course, is nowhere near what he would make in a top law firm, but to succeed there, you have to have a background of top grades at top colleges and the ability to crank out exceptional work for hours on end. Had this individual gone to a lower ranked law school, he wouldn’t have the option of a soft-landing in a government position, as the Feds are constantly looking to fill diversity slots. He would likely be working at a small private firm, busting his butt chasing ambulances or doing criminal defense for $80,000 per year. Similarly, Michelle Obama left a top rated law firm to work in “community outreach” for the University system, where she made very good money for relatively easy work. And as a black female with a Harvard Law degree, corporate spokesman opportunities would be enticing her…..
This reminds me of a case some years back where the CA State Bar decided to reinstate an attorney convicted of murdering his wife after he served his sentence. The Bar determined that “the misconduct was unlikely to be repeated.” The CA Supreme Court overruled the Bar and refused his readmission.
True. She was already dead, sooo no way he could murder her again.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Squeeky – however, spouses who have murdered one spouse may go on to murder another. So, the door is open.
Paul – I had assumed he wouldn’t murder another spouse because nobody would likely marry him. I wouldn’t marry a person who had murdered a previous spouse, but maybe that’s just me…..I want to be able to sleep with both eyes closed. 😉
TIN – I watch Forensics Files and men serially strangle mates, but there is the occasional gun involved (accidental discharge is the claim). For women, they seem to like to put stuff in your food. 😉
Soooooo, sleep soundly but take your meals at restaurants, lol.
TIN – and don’t let them pack your lunch or Thermos. 😉
William Bayer – Avenatti is a media whore.
And Giuliani isn’t? I wish people would stop being so patently partisan. They are obviously all whores.
No, he isn’t. There are complaints about Giuliani’s conduct as a prosecutor (debatable) and as a husband (not debatable). However, there’s no question he is the most accomplished public official of his generation. There’s before Giuliani and their’s after Giuliani, not only in New York but in any city which has tried to follow the example he and Wm. Bratton set.
Definitely complaints about him as a cousin, but I suppose those overlap with about 33% of the complaints about him as a husband.
And, he represents one, too! Isn’t that symetry cemetery symmetricality oh you know what I am trying to say but I am too loopy right now to remember how to spell it. No “it”, which is i and t, but the thing where both sides are the same. Oh, I just give up. Time for a grilled cheese sandwich and oh, I have some left over cold coffee too.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
This is the shit that will send this country into the shishme (Arabic for toilet)
Sent from my iPad
>
we are already there…..and we can thank the roving gangs of thuggish lawyers for supplying the trip…
Meanwhile, the judge in the Michael Cohen case gave Avenatti an ultimatum: Stay off of TV or get out of her court — and Avenatti decided to get out of her court.
Whattaya say about a “lawyer” who chooses TV appearances over courtroom appearances?
He’s not a lawyer — he just plays one on TV.