Author Description

"This inaugural edition of the Annotated ABA Standards for Imposing Lawyer Sanctions presents an authoritative and practical analysis of the cases and other legal authorities essential to understanding the black letter Standards. The black letter Standards and Commentary were first adopted by the ABA House of Delegates in February 1986 and were last amended in February 1992. Since their adoption the Standards have served as a model comprehensive system for the imposition of lawyer disciplinary standards that leaves appropriate flexibility for courts and disciplinary agencies given the particular facts of each case of lawyer misconduct. In February 2012, the ABA Standing Committee on Professional Discipline filed, and the ABA House of Delegates approved, Resolution 107 reaffirming the black letter Standards as policy of the Association and rescinding the House's adoption of the Commentary as such. The Committee determined and the House agreed that, unlike the Comments to the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct or the ABA Model Code of Judicial Conduct, the Commentary to the black letter Standards were more like annotations. By removing the Commentary from the Standards policy corpus this Annotation can and will be updated at regular intervals to ensure that the document remains most useful to the courts, profession, and the public."--Acknowledgments.