Virginia Lawyers Weekly

Manuel A. Capsalis says he wants to emphasize public protection and diversity during his year as Virginia State Bar president.
Public protection is “the very core of our mission,” he said, and “the rule of law and diversity are inextricably linked. Without diversity, there is a very strong perception that the rule of law means different things to different people.”

Capsalis, whose term began at the VSB Annual Meeting in Virginia Beach earlier this month, has called a public protection conclave for the start of the VSB’s annual disciplinary conference on July 10 in Ports-mouth. He hopes to have on hand representatives from all aspects of the bar that have something to do with public protection, including the department of professional regulation, the Clients’ Protection Fund, Lawyers Helping Lawyers and the committee on lawyer malpractice insurance.

He wants those representatives to talk about “what we do, how we do it and whether we can do it better. … I think we do a commendable job of public protection. The pertinent question is whether we can do a better job.”

Various groups are exploring the concepts of random audits of trust accounts, mandatory legal malpractice insurance and notification of claimants by insurance companies when they issue a settlement check to an attorney,
“I want to give the process a chance to work,” so that VSB Council and the Supreme Court of Virginia can have the best information to make policy decisions on those concepts, he said.

Some bar leaders were chastened after the council voted 54-7 to reject the idea of claimant notification and they learned that a Woodbridge attorney apparently took more than $3 million in personal injury settlements from hundreds of clients.

That was the fourth case in which an attorney had misappropriated at least $2 million in recent years. (Two of the attorneys are in prison, one is in jail awaiting trial and the fourth has not been charged, although he has been hit with judgments totaling more than $2 million).

“I’m very intrigued with the concept of random audits,” a program conducted by 11 states, including North Carolina. A representative from the program there told bar leaders last month that educating lawyers about how to set up and monitor their accounts is a major component of it.

On the diversity front, “we still have an unsatisfactory number of lawyers of color in positions of leadership on the state and local level” of bar organizations, he said. “For us to be responsive to society, we need to be more reflective of society and we’re not.”
He has appointed a task force headed by VSB Council member and former VSB President Joseph A. Condo to investigate ways to counter “the risk of the perception of exclusion rather than inclusion.”

Part of the focus will be developing a pipeline to attract promising minority high school and college students to the profession. The VSB has some noteworthy projects in that regard, Capsalis noted, such as pre-law conferences that its Young Lawyers Conference conducts each year, but he said more needs to be done.

“One thing I’m going to try to do is be vocal about it,” he said.

Capsalis will be leading the policy arm of the bar at a time of new leadership for its staff. Karen A. Gould took over as executive director late last year, and Edward L. “Ned” Davis, a longtime assistant bar counsel, has been picked to head the department of professional regulation when George W. Chabalewski steps down next month.

“Karen is doing a great job,” Capsalis said. “We are very lucky to have her.” She accepted the position while serving as immediate past president so there has been “a minimal learning curve,” he said.

Other major projects include setting the stage for a dues increase that will be necessary in the next year of two to maintain the current level of activity by the agency and getting the VSB more “Internet and electronically oriented. … We’re still not fully into the 21st Century.”

He said he hopes that the bar can make better use of information technology to gather data on continuing legal education and disciplinary matters and to streamline the payment of dues.

Capsalis said he also would like to revisit the idea of making the bar’s membership information more available to the public and bar members. The VSB Council voted to have members make an affirmative decision to make their information available rather than have them opt out if they want to be excluded.

The result has been that information about a relatively small percentage of bar members is available on the its Web site.
Capsalis, 49, was born in Durham, N.C., and earned his undergraduate degree from Duke University and a master’s degree in history from George Mason University three years later. He was editor-in-chief of the George Mason University Law Review before receiving his law degree in 1988.

His wife, Carole, is an associate in his six-lawyer firm of Capsalis, Bruce & Reaser PLC in Arlington. The couple has two daughters, ages 18 and 16, and a son, 14.

The firm’s practice areas include criminal and civil litigation, personal injury and business and franchise law. Capsalis is a substitute general district judge in Fairfax County and a prosecutor and deputy town attorney in Herndon.

He first became involved in bar activities in the late 1980s and early 1990s as a member of the Young Lawyers Conference. He worked to develop the Arlington County law library in the mid-1990s and was president of the county bar association in 1999.
Capsalis was a member of bar council for six years beginning in 2001 and served on the executive committee before becoming president-elect last year.

He said he believes strongly in the obligation of public service and has found his interaction with “the caliber of individuals from across the state that I would never had the opportunity to meet” to be the most rewarding part of that service.

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