Attorney Grievance Comm'n of Md. v. Jackson

477 Md. 174

269 A.3d 252

ATTORNEY GRIEVANCE COMMISSION OF MARYLAND

v.Dawn R. JACKSON

Misc. Docket AG No. 9, Sept. Term, 2020

Court of Appeals of Maryland.

January 31, 2022

Argued by Lydia E. Lawless, Bar Counsel (Attorney Grievance Commission of Maryland), for Petitioner.

Argued by Irwin R. Kramer, Esquire (Kramer & Connolly), Reisterstown, MD, for Respondent.

Getty, C.J., McDonald, Watts, Hotten, Booth, Biran, Irma S. Raker (Senior Judge, Specially Assigned), JJ.

Booth, J.

In this attorney grievance proceeding, the Respondent, Dawn Jackson, is a lawyer admitted to the District of Columbia Bar who is not licensed in Maryland. She is a partner in a law firm, Jackson & Associates. In addition to Ms. Jackson, the law firm also employs Maryland attorneys. In 2014, the law firm relocated from the District of Columbia to Maryland. In 2015, Senior Assistant Bar Counsel Dolores Ridgell met with Ms. Jackson in Ms. Jackson's Maryland office. During that meeting, Ms. Ridgell made specific recommendations to Ms. Jackson concerning how to maintain her Maryland office in accordance with the Maryland rules of professional conduct. Ms. Jackson incorporated Ms. Ridgell's recommendations and continued to practice law from her Maryland office. She limited her own practice to matters arising under District of Columbia laws, where she was barred, while also performing administrative matters for the law firm.

Three and one-half years after Ms. Ridgell's visit to Ms. Jackson's law office, Bar Counsel commenced this investigation on September 19, 2018, after receiving material from an anonymous source. On April 7, 2020, the Attorney Grievance Commission ("Commission"), through Bar Counsel, filed a Petition for Disciplinary or Remedial Action, pursuant to Maryland Rule 19-721, against Ms. Jackson, alleging that she violated numerous provisions of the rules of professional conduct. ¹

These included alleged violations of Rule 1.1 (competence); Rule 1.3 (diligence); Rule 1.4 (communication); Rule 1.16 (declining or terminating representation); Rule 3.3 (candor toward the tribunal); Rule 3.4 (fairness to opposing party and attorney); Rule 5.1 (responsibilities regarding non-attorney assistants); Rule 5.5 (unauthorized practice of law; multi-jurisdictional practice of law); Rule 8.1(a) (bar admission and disciplinary matters); and Rule 8.4(a), (b), (c), and (d) (misconduct). Bar Counsel also charged Ms. Jackson with violating sections 10-206 and 10-601 of the Business Occupations and Professions Article ("BOP") of the Maryland Code. Bar Counsel later withdrew the charges related to competence and diligence.

Pursuant to Rule 19-722(a), we designated Judge Lawrence V. Hill, Jr. of the Circuit Court for Prince George's County ("the hearing judge") to conduct a hearing concerning the alleged violations and to provide findings of fact and conclusions of law. Following a hearing in January 2021, the hearing judge concluded that Ms. Jackson violated Rule 5.5 by engaging in the unauthorized practice of law in Maryland. The hearing judge further concluded that there was insufficient evidence to establish violations of Rule 1.4, Rule 1.16, Rule 3.3, Rule 3.4, Rule 5.1, Rule 5.3, Rule 8.1(a), Rule 8.4(a)–(d), BOP § 10-206 and BOP § 10-601.

This Court has original and complete jurisdiction in attorney discipline proceedings and conducts an independent review of the record. Attorney Grievance Comm'n v. Ambe, 425 Md. 98, 123, 38 A.3d 390 (2012) (internal citations omitted). We review the hearing judge's findings of fact under the clearly erroneous standard. Id . When no exceptions are filed to a hearing judge's findings of fact, we accept them as established. Md. Rule 19-740(b)(2)(A). Additionally, we "may confine [our] review to the findings of fact challenged by the exceptions." Md. Rule 19-740(b)(2)(B). In this case, Bar Counsel did not file any exceptions to the hearing judge's findings of fact, and Ms. Jackson excepts to only one factual finding. We summarize below the hearing judge's findings of fact and other undisputed matters in the record, as they relate to the alleged violations, and we address the one factual exception as part of our discussion.

IFacts

Ms. Jackson's Bar Admissions

Ms. Jackson was admitted to the New Jersey Bar in 2001 and the District of Columbia Bar in 2004. She is not, and never has been, licensed to practice law in Maryland.

Ms. Jackson's Law Practice with Brynee Baylor – Baylor & Jackson

From 2001 through 2011, Ms. Jackson and Brynee Baylor were partners in the law firm of Baylor & Jackson, PLLC ("the Baylor & Jackson law firm"), which maintained an office for the practice of law in the District of Columbia. Ms. Baylor was licensed to practice in both Maryland and the District of Columbia. The law firm also employed associate-attorneys, Chervonti Jones and Tiffany Sims, both of whom were licensed to practice law in Maryland. Ms. Jackson's practice focused on clients and legal matters arising in the District of Columbia, and Ms. Baylor handled cases in both jurisdictions where she was licensed, with the assistance of the associate-attorneys who were also licensed in Maryland.

Ms. Jackson and Ms. Baylor supervised the associate-attorneys. Ms. Jackson was also responsible for the firm's administrative responsibilities, including maintaining the firm's trust account, entering leases and other contracts on behalf of the law firm, hiring staff, and other administrative functions. Ms. Jackson also served as a key resource for other members of the law firm. The attorneys in the firm would consult her on an as needed basis to calculate case expenses and the clients’ net recovery on contingency fee cases. Ms. Jackson assisted with the preparation of settlement sheets, itemizing the deductions from the clients’ gross recovery.

SEC Case Against Brynee Baylor

At some point prior to November 2011, the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC") commenced an investigation of Ms. Baylor for securities fraud. According to the SEC, Ms. Baylor helped perpetrate a securities fraud scheme in which Ms. Baylor posed as counsel to one of her co-defendants to lend an air of legitimacy to the scheme and masked some of her proceeds of the fraudulent funds as attorney's fees, which she laundered through the Baylor & Jackson law firm. After unsealing a complaint against Ms. Baylor on November 30, 2011, the SEC contacted Ms. Jackson via telephone and advised her of the case that it had filed against her partner. The SEC informed Ms. Jackson that it had seized the law firm's operating account and her personal account, thus making it impossible for Ms. Jackson to pay staff or support her family.

Ms. Jackson was named as a "relief defendant" in the SEC fraud litigation against Ms. Baylor, and spent the next few years helping the agency recover money for Ms. Baylor's victims. The SEC case resulted in the entry of a judgment in 2013 against Ms. Baylor, the Baylor & Jackson law firm, and other co-defendants for over $2.6 million, which was upheld on appeal that concluded in 2015.²

The hearing judge found that, in the aftermath of the SEC's November 2011 telephone call, Ms. Jackson was overwhelmed with obligations to her family, her staff, the SEC, and attorney disciplinary authorities in Washington, D.C. and Maryland (who had opened disciplinary investigations into Ms. Baylor). After being told that federal officials had frozen her firm's operating account, Ms. Jackson testified that she became "emotionally [ ] distraught," describing herself as a "zombie trying to keep everything together." Ms. Jackson testified about the physical and emotional toll that Ms. Baylor's scandal had on her personal and professional life. Portions of Ms. Jackson's medical records were admitted into evidence. As part of our consideration of the mitigating factors found by the hearing judge in this case, we shall discuss in more detail the personal and emotional problems that Ms. Jackson suffered as a result of Ms. Baylor's fraudulent actions.

Despite the SEC's civil and criminal investigation into Ms. Baylor, she remained licensed in Maryland and in the District of Columbia for years after the complaints and indictment were unsealed. Ms. Jackson testified that, during the initial transition period in 2011 and 2012, she had no way to deny Ms. Baylor access to the office or to client files because Ms. Baylor was licensed to practice law, and Ms. Jackson was required by the SEC to maintain the Baylor & Jackson law firm as a going concern. Ms. Baylor continued to have keys to the office and could access her desktop computer by logging in remotely.

Ms. Jackson's Formation of a New Firm – Jackson & Associates

During this transition period—beginning in late 2011 or early 2012, as Ms. Jackson was cooperating with the SEC to preserve the Baylor & Jackson law firm as a going concern, and ultimately winding it down to satisfy the judgment—Ms. Jackson formed a new law firm, Jackson & Associates Law Firm, PLLC ("Jackson & Associates"). From 2011 until sometime in 2014, Ms. Jackson operated her new law firm from the same office space in the District of Columbia, where she continued to perform the same administrative responsibilities, with the same attorneys (except Ms. Baylor) and staff that had previously been employed at the Baylor & Jackson law firm.

Jackson & Associates Moves Its Office from the District of Columbia to Maryland

When their lease expired, in the spring of 2014, Jackson & Associates moved its office from its District of Columbia location to an office in Upper Marlboro, Maryland. Ms. Jackson continued to focus on cases arising in the District of Columbia, while the Maryland lawyers who were employed by the firm, Tiffany Sims, Pamela Ashby, and Victoria Adegoke, handled Maryland cases. After the office relocated from the District of Columbia to Maryland, Ms. Jackson continued to perform the same administrative responsibilities for the law firm that she always had—such as...