Necessary discipline, or 'cancel' culture? NC lawmakers may revise ethics oversight for lawyers

It could soon be harder for members of the public to find out if local attorneys have run afoul of legal or ethics rules.

On Wednesday a new committee held its first meeting at the state legislature, tasked with reviewing how the State Bar handles disciplinary issues. The Bar is in charge of overseeing — and sometimes disciplining — all of the lawyers in North Carolina, and some GOP leaders now want changes to how it operates. And there could be bipartisan appetite for reform; many politicians on both sides of the aisle are lawyers.

Woody White, a former Republican state senator and New Hanover County Commissioner who works as a criminal defense attorney in Wilmington, is leading the new committee alongside Larry Shaheen, a lawyer and GOP political consultant from Charlotte.

White said he was concerned about cancel culture seeping into the Bar’s disciplinary process. He said he wants to work on “ensuring, while we are protecting the public, that we are not allowing the public to weaponize things improperly. That we're not allowing the public to use the Bar as a weapon against people to cancel, and to otherwise curb and influence rights that we've been given under the First Amendment.”

White said he wanted to look at several options — such as letting lawyers who have been disciplined by the bar get those records erased from public view, if whatever they did wrong wasn’t deemed “nefarious” in nature.

He added that there could also be a separate process to erase lawyers' disciplinary records after they die, to save embarrassment for future generations of their family. Some of the issues that can lead to discipline include lawyers misusing their clients’ finances, abusing drugs or alcohol, or having sexual relationships with clients.

“Should a grandchild be able to look up her grandmother, 20 years later, and see things?” White said.

Shaheen spoke about making sure the Bar isn’t punishing lawyers for their political beliefs in disciplinary hearings — although he didn’t offer any examples or allegations of that having happened.

“It must be done in a way where there is not going to be questions about any type of issues of partisanship, nor other issues of concerns about what the individual believes outside of the practice of law,” he said.

Marcia Armstrong — a Johnston County attorney and the immediate past president of the State Bar — also gets a vote on the new committee. On Wednesday she urged the other committee members to remember that the Bar’s main goal is to protect the general public of the state.

“I'm one of those optimistic people that thinks that we're going to come up with some really good ideas,” she said. “I think that all of us can agree that the Polar Star is protection of the public. … The state bar wants to protect the public because that's our charge, our mission. But then, we also want to give lawyers a fair shake.”

Also on the committee are: