JDs Rising

By Brett Clark

Plagiarism, as it turns out, is still frowned upon after law school.

According to the ABA Journal, attorney Peter Cannon has been publicly reprimanded by the Iowa Supreme Court for plagiarizing 17 pages of a 19-page brief he submitted in bankruptcy court.

Bankruptcy Judge Paul Kilberg was tipped off that something might be amiss “having found Cannon’s briefs to be of unusually high quality” [ouch] and ordered Cannon “to certify that he was the author of the two briefs in question.”  He acknowledged that he “relied heavily” on an article entitled Why Professionals Must be Interested in “Disinterestedness” Under the Bankruptcy Code by William H. Schrag and Mark C. Haut.

Judge Kilberg determined that the $5,737.50 Cannon had charged his client for 25.5 hours of work on the two briefs submitted on the motion was unreasonable given the actual labor he put into the documents.  He ordered that the fees be disgorged and sent Cannon back to law school to retake professional responsibility at an accredited law school.  (See Kilberg opinion.)

The Iowa Supreme Court had its say on October 15.  It did not find Cannon’s fee to be excessive given that he spent most of his recorded time reviewing records and conducting legal research.  Given his admission, his compliance with Judge Kilberg’s order and his payment to his client to get another lawyer up to speed on the file, the Court declined to adopt the Grievance Commission’s recommendation of a six month suspension.  Due to its excessive nature, however, Cannon’s plagiarism warranted a public reprimand:

We recognize that the term “plagiarism” is something of a scarlet letter that imposes a brand on a wide variety of behaviors. We do not believe our ethical rules were designed to empower the court to play a “gotcha” game with lawyers who merely fail to use adequate citation methods. This case, however, does not involve a mere instance of less than perfect citation, but rather wholesale copying of seventeen pages of material. Such massive, nearly verbatim copying of a published writing without attribution in the main brief, in our view, does amount to a misrepresentation that violates our ethical rules. We note that before this court, Cannon has candidly admitted that his activity represented dishonesty and not negligence or incompetence.

(Supreme Court opinion here.)

Cannon’s case is obviously an extreme one-as the Court noted, this was more than a case of cutting corners-but plagiarism is more than just a misappropriation of intellectual property when it happens in a legal submission.  An attorney who misappropriates material commits fraud upon the court.  Minn. Stat. § 481.07.  He also potentially disserves his client by applying an argument written for a differing set of facts.  Even when conducted on a smaller level, misappropriation of law review articles or legal opinions amounts to intellectual laziness that can land a lawyer in hot water.