Lawyer still practicing after suspension, gets longer suspension

The Virginia State Bar Disciplinary Board has suspended the license of a Leesburg lawyer for five years because he continued to practice law and accepted a fee without providing services after his license had been suspended administratively.

The action against David Redd Young Jr. came at an expedited hearing on May 20. The incident that troubled the board the most was a $2,200 fee Young accepted to handle a bankruptcy in October 2010 after failing to respond to notices from the VSB that his license had been suspended four months earlier.

The board scheduled the hearing after Assistant VSB Counsel Marian L. Beckett had concluded that the continued practice of law by Young posed an imminent danger to the public.

In her petition for the hearing, Beckett said a woman hired Young in April 2009 and paid him $2,500 for representation in a spousal support hearing.

He appeared at the hearing but failed to communicate with her afterward despite her efforts to contact him, including a registered letter to his office for which she received a confirmation of receipt.

After the woman filed a bar complaint in January 2010, the VSB directed Young to respond to the complaint but he did not do so. As a result, a subpoena duces tecum was issued in March for production of the client file, including all financial and trust account records.

Young received and signed for the subpoena but failed to respond to it. He also did not respond to a notice of interim suspension filed in May. As a result, his license was suspended in June 2010.

A VSB investigator found that Young’s office telephone had a recording that the number was not in service.

Young also represented a client in an equitable distribution case that was continued several times after he appeared for hearing in July 2009. Loudoun Circuit Judge James H. Chamblin discovered in August 2010 that Young’s license had been suspended before Young advised his law clerk that he and opposing counsel would submit an agreed order.

Chamblin reported the incident to the VSB and noted that Young had appeared in at least one criminal matter after the suspension. Young failed to respond to the bar’s notice that he appeared to be practicing law without a license.

In the bankruptcy case, Young spoke to the client only once after he received the fee, when he assured him the bankruptcy petition would be filed shortly. It was not filed, and the client learned that Young’s telephone had been disconnected when the client tried to call him in January.

Young again failed to respond to a notice of the complaint sent to him a month later.

He is a graduate of the University of Tennessee and the University of Virginia. He was admitted to the bar in 1980.