Heed This Warning: Guard Your License to Practice Law, or Your Clients Will Suffer.

When the attorney doesn’t have the authority, should the client be punished? Even if the Attorney is unaware that his license was under a thirty day suspension, how is the client to know?

This disturbing article parallels the Attorney-Client relationship to Agency theory. If the Attorney does not have the authority to file an appeal, then the client lacks the authority, under Agency theory.

Bright-Line Blunder

Client loses after suspended lawyer files notice of appeal

By Geri L. Dreiling

If an attorney with a suspended license files a notice of appeal, the client will pay a price, even if neither the lawyer nor the client knew of the suspension, the Virginia Court of Appeals has ruled.

"When an attorney’s license to practice law in the commonwealth has been suspended, any pleading filed during that time is a nullity," wrote Judge Robert J. Humphreys in Jones v. Jones, No. 2426-05-4 (Oct. 24). As a result, the appeal must be dismissed.

"This opinion gives new meaning to the word formalistic," says Rory Little, a legal ethics professor at the University of California-Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco.

That makes sense. The Court must draw a bright line or else any lawyer could use the lame excuse, "I didn't know." Now I ask the question: how was he to know?

http://www.abanet.org/journal/ereport/d8suspend.html