Slip Up Leads To Reprimand

The Georgia Supreme Court has approved a public reprimand in a case where the attorney "mistakenly provided the wrong deposit slip for a litigation funding check to one of his clients, so the check was incorrectly deposited into [his] firm operating account rather than his IOLTA account."

As a result, a check that the attorney wrote to himself bounced.

The attorney  had a practice of depositing personal funds into the escrow account "so that when settlements were finalized, he could immediately distribute the client proceeds without waiting for the drafts to clear."

The State Bar had opposed reprimand.

The court noted that the attorney had changed his escrow practices "without waiting for the State Bar to ask..." (Mike Frisch)