The VLW Blog

A lawyer who allowed grieving family members to forge a dying woman’s signature on estate planning documents has had his law license suspended for two and a half years by the Virginia State Bar Disciplinary Board. The decision comes seven months after John M. Coppola was disbarred in Maryland for the same offenses.
Coppola, a Leesburg [...]

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A former attorney who was disbarred after he paid his son’s school tuition directly from his trust account now has pleaded guilty to mail fraud and tax evasion in connection with misuse of his law practice finances.
Steven F. Helm of Salem faces up to 23 years in prison on the charges, although prosecutors have agreed [...]

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A Virginia State Bar discipline committee rejected First Amendment defenses and distinctions about public information to find misconduct on the part of a lawyer who blogged about his cases without client consent and without a disclaimer saying case results can be unreliable.
The eight-member district committee ordered Horace Hunter of Richmond to yank from his website [...]

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A federal appeals court finds it a “close question” whether a lawyer can be convicted of obstruction of justice for conveniently omitting his prior disciplinary record in seeking pro hac vice status in a Virginia case.
A three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided the omission alone was not sufficient to prove [...]

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A Charlottesville judge cut a husband’s wrongful death verdict by two thirds and ordered sanctions against the plaintiff and his lawyer in the aftermath of a hotly contested trial that produced a record overall jury award.
A 32-page order from Circuit Court Judge Edward Hogshire also refers Charlottesville lawyer Matthew Murray to the Virginia State Bar [...]

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Prince William County Commonwealth’s Attorney Paul Ebert denies he violated the law or the Rules of Professional Conduct in the capital murder prosecution of Justin Wolfe.
Wolfe was convicted of arranging the murder of a drug dealer, but his case now is subject to habeas corpus review based on a July opinion from U.S. [...]

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Former Richmond lawyer Bradley Wein has been arrested on criminal charges that he raided funds of an elderly client, buying coins and other items for his personal use.
According to a federal indictment, Wein was hired by the woman to handle certain financial matters. He used her credit cards to purchase more than $27,000 worth of [...]

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Disbarment orders can be a sad litany of lawyer oversights and defalcations, but one item stands out on an edict approving termination of a South Carolina attorney’s license. The attorney, it seems, tried to have an opposing lawyer killed.
According to the S.C. Supreme Court order, Irby Walker sought to hire a hit man to kill [...]

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After a failed appeal to the Supreme Court of Virginia, a previously imposed 12-month suspension for Norfolk-based attorney Curtis Brown is now effective.
A panel of Norfolk Circuit Court judges found that he made false statements to a jury during a 2007 personal injury case in Chesapeake, reports The Virginian-Pilot.
The suspension order indicates Brown sought a [...]

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A Salem lawyer facing Virginia State Bar findings that he misused funds in his client trust account agreed to revocation of his law license last month.
Steven F. Helm consented to revocation based on findings that his trust account “was overdrawn for insufficient funds on several occasions,” that payments to be made on behalf of clients [...]

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