RTL was founded by Michael Hill, a 40-year practitioner of environmental law as a DOJ trial attorney, law firm partner, and corporate officer. Mr. Hill learned of BEA failures (and increasingly learned of our Rules’ requirements) only after he witnessed and reported attorney fraud as required by DC’s and VT’s Ethics Rules, as he is a member of both Bars. After DC (and then VT) failed to act and the post-reporting harm from the fraud grew to over $150M, Mr. Hill discovered the same “shocking culture of unethical and unacceptable behavior” that CA found when it investigated its BEAs.

Were any of RTL’s statements untrue or to lack a good faith basis, DC and VT could sanction Mr. Hill for false statements. Further, if DC or VT has a good faith basis to deny any of RTL’s statements, they could email admin@ethicsrules.org and have their denials posted here. One must hope that, rather than continue to ignore the violations and harm, BEAs will rectify the harm and prevent further harm as the Rules require of them (e.g., 1.6, 1.13, and 8.3). DC has written that “the duty to report lies with each individual lawyer,” so lawyers who are required to report misconduct are not relieved of that duty even if others may have separately reported it. How then can DC’s BEAs fail even to acknowledge the NDA questions much less stop the underlying violations?

More background on Mr. Hill can be found here. Of perhaps greatest relevance is that he is largely-retired and thus has greater freedom to identify BEA failures than when his livelihood was more dependent on avoiding retaliation, however pretextual. Further information on RTL — including how to help, as other attorneys and laypeople already are — can be had by emailing admin@ethicsrules.org.