In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
No. D-10-0015
IN RE:
L AWRENCE S COTT W ICK,
Respondent.
Disciplinary Matter
D ECIDED D ECEMBER 9, 2010
Before P OSNER, W OOD , and T INDER, Circuit Judges.
P OSNER, Circuit Judge. The Supreme Court of Illinois
disbarred attorney Wick because of fraudulent overbilling
of clients. He is a member of our bar, and we ordered
him to show cause why he should not be expelled from
it as well. 7th Cir. R. 46(d). In response, he points to
repeated requests that he made last year to be allowed
to withdraw voluntarily; as a result of clerical error, his
requests were not acted on. His response asks us to
allow him to withdraw now. The question whether and
when a lawyer should be permitted to resign from a bar
is novel in this court, and so we have decided to
address it in a published opinion.
2 No. D-10-0015
Like most bars we don’t charge an annual fee—indeed,
we charge no fee besides the fee for joining (some courts
charge a renewal fee). As a result, resignations are very
rare; in fact we have a record of only one request to be
permitted to resign from the bar of our court. It was
granted because there was no reason to suppose any
ethical issue involved; the reason the lawyer gave for
wanting to resign was simply that she didn’t intend to
handle any further cases in this court. Why a lawyer
would bother to request permission to resign a mem-
bership that imposes no financial or other obligations
(such as commitment to an organization’s principles)
is unclear, and this leads us to speculate that
the most common reason is a desire to avoid expul-
sion—a desire that should not be honored. “[A]n attor-
ney likewise may not evade [the court’s] disciplinary
authority through strategic withdrawal after disciplinary
proceedings have commenced.” In re Saghir, 595 F.3d 472,
474 (2d Cir. 2010) (per curiam); see also In re Jaffe, 585
F.3d 118, 125 (2d Cir. 2009) (per curiam). If the lawyer
belongs to another bar, and intends to continue prac-
ticing law, the misconduct that caused him to be dis-
barred in another jurisdiction should not be swept under
the rug. Id. (“while we acknowledge the Committee’s
reasons for recommending that the termination be
through withdrawal, we believe it would be misleading
to suggest in any way that Jaffe’s separation from this
Court’s bar was voluntary”).
Some courts, it seems, allow withdrawal more or less
automatically even after disciplinary proceedings have
been instituted—even when instituted by the very court
No. D-10-0015 3
from whose bar the lawyer seeks to withdraw. See, e.g.,
In re Barrett, 549 U.S. 948 (2006) (mem.); In re Clinton,
534 U.S. 1016 (2001) (mem.); cf. In re Weston, 442 N.E.2d
236, 239 (Il. 1982). Maybe these courts don’t want to
be bothered with completing the disciplinary pro-
ceeding, since voluntary withdrawal has similar conse-
quences to the discipline that would be meted out at
the end of the proceedings—though not identical con-
sequences because the reason for the withdrawal is not
publicly disclosed and so there is the danger of mis-
leading that the Second Circuit noted in the Jaffe case.
We have not been burdened by frequent requests to
allow resignation from our bar, and so we don’t have
the excuse of workload to justify imitating the practice
of such courts. When an attorney is removed from the
roll of attorneys admitted to practice before this court,
we don’t want to leave the impression that the separa-
tion was innocent if in fact it was precipitated by the at-
torney’s wrongdoing.
In seeking to resign from the bar of our court, Wick has
managed to compound the misconduct that led to his
disbarment by the Supreme Court of Illinois. In Novem-
ber 2008 the Illinois Attorney and Registration Dis-
ciplinary Commission had ordered him to show cause
why he should not be disciplined for overcharging
two clients more than a million dollars. In April of the
following year, and again in June and July, he wrote
the Clerk of our court requesting leave to resign from
our bar but did not mention the order to show cause.
He gave us the following reasons for wanting to resign:
that he was closing his law practice, had not had a
4 No. D-10-0015
case before this court in more than a decade, had been
permitted to resign by a number of other bars, was in
good standing in all courts to whose bars he had been
admitted, and had “not been suspended, disbarred or
disciplined in other way by any court for any reason.”
All this was literally true, so far as we know, but it
was misleading in view of the pending disciplinary
proceeding.
The Supreme Court of Illinois disbarred Wick in Septem-
ber 2010, and his disbarment precipitated our order that
he show cause why he shouldn’t be disbarred by our
court as well. He has no reason, financial or otherwise,
for wanting to resign from the bar of our court other
than to avoid the sanction of another disbarment. That is
a bad reason.
In addition to seeking to resign, Wick asks us to
suspend our disciplinary proceeding until the U.S. Su-
preme Court acts on a petition for certiorari that he
has filed, challenging his disbarment from the Illinois bar.
He argues that the proceeding that resulted in his dis-
barment denied him due process of law. In so arguing
he appeals to the principle that disbarment in one juris-
diction does not require disbarment in other jurisdic-
tions. In re Ruffalo, 390 U.S. 544, 547 (1968); Theard v. United
States, 354 U.S. 278, 282 (1957); Gadda v. Ashcroft, 377
F.3d 934, 943 (9th Cir. 2004); In re Surrick, 338 F.3d 224,
231 (3d Cir. 2003). The Supreme Court has held that a
lawyer can resist disbarment by the second court by
demonstrating a denial of due process or other grave
deficiency in the first disbarment proceeding. In re
No. D-10-0015 5
Ruffalo, supra, 390 U.S. at 550; Selling v. Radford, 243 U.S. 46,
51-52 (1917); In re Squire, 617 F.3d 461, 465-66 (6th Cir.
2010); In re Roman, 601 F.3d 189, 193 (2d Cir. 2010) (per
curiam). This seems a little odd, as it is so like allowing
the disbarred lawyer to mount a collateral attack on his
disbarment, though the Supreme Court was explicit
in Selling v. Radford, supra, 243 U.S. at 50, that this
would not be the consequence even if the lawyer was
successful in resisting the first disbarment by demon-
strating that the procedure resulting in it had been seri-
ously deficient. See also In re Sibley, 564 F.3d 1335,
1340 (D.C. Cir. 2009); In re Cook, 551 F.3d 542, 547-48 (6th
Cir. 2009). But Wick has made no attempt to prove a
serious procedural irregularity in the Illinois proceeding,
see In re Oliveras López de Victoria, 561 F.3d 1, 4 (1st Cir.
2009) (per curiam); In re Fallin, 235 F.3d 195, 197-98 (4th
Cir. 2001) (per curiam), though should the U.S. Supreme
Court grant certiorari and order him reinstated to the
Illinois bar he can seek reinstatement to our bar as well.
We order Wick disbarred.
12-9-10