VT’s BEAs have failed to ever enforce not only Rule 8.3 (which is true of 47 other States) but also Rule 3.1 (requiring Good Faith). Those failures have persisted despite a 2023 VT Bar Ass’n Survey revealing that its lawyers violate 3.1 alone over 1,000 times a year as witnessed by over 30% of the Bar.  Another 30% witnessed incivility and over 90% believe the increased lack of professionalism and incivility “increases … costs” and “harms the public’s/clients’ confidence in the justice system.”

While certainly not all arguments must be right, 3.1 requires that all have at least “a good faith argument for an extension, modification or reversal of existing law,” (3.1), and where lawyers repeatedly violate 3.1 or say things that are knowingly false, 8.3 requires (“shall”) other lawyers to report them.

In addition to the already-public facts above, VT BEAs have privately gone so far in avoiding enforcement as to themselves assert without good faith basis that:

-       3.1 cannot be enforced by BEAs while litigation is pending (even for years), and does not apply to BEAs at all; and

-       8.3 does not apply to false statements of non-VT lawyers even when the statements are made in VT and cost Vermonters millions of dollars.

VT BEAs have to date kept these “private” facts secret not only from the public but even from their Supreme Court. They can do so because, in VT, attorney disciplinary proceedings are done almost completely in the dark, and BEAs’ decisions to not enforce cannot be appealed even to the Court.