Attorney Misappropriation of Clients’ Funds: A Study in Professional Responsibility

The legal profession has initiated disciplinary processes and clients’ security funds in order to achieve certain objectives. This article will delineate these objectives and evaluate whether they have been satisfied. Moreover, it will propose additional goals that the legal profession, given its present status as a self-regulating profession, should attain in satisfying its responsibility for governing the professional conduct of its members. Finally, additional measures that several states have instituted in order to complement the efforts of disciplinary agencies and clients’ security funds by fulfilling unsatisfied needs of professional responsibility will be examined.