What the legal profession will regard as conduct that calls into question a lawyer’s honesty sufficiently to disbar him is a mysterious and unpredictable area. Remember, John Edwards never received as much as a rap on the wrists for his exorbitant lying to hide the fact that he had a mistress and a love child while he was running for President in 2008. Now the Michigan Attorney Discipline Board has been affirmed in its decision to disbar lawyer Ali Zaidi for having false credentials and representations on his professional resumé.
I would expect that to send chills down many a lawyer’s spine, since professional resumés of lawyers and non-lawyers alike are so frequently loaded with puffery that it is almost an “everybody does it” ethical breach. (This is my favorite, the long-time lie of Clinton crony Bill Richardson.) Fortunately for most of them, the Rules of Professional Conduct involving honesty are narrowly interpreted to exclude all but violations of law, breaking official pledges, defaulting on loans and lying under oath, unless they involve the actual practice of law. (Lying to a judge, to a client or in a brief is career suicide.) Does a resumé fudge qualify as the unethical practice of law? Not usually: Ziadi’s must have been something special.
It was.
According to the Jan. 11 opinion of the discipline board, Zaidi’s false claims “run the gamut from outlandish and extravagant to what might be termed modifications of his record inspired by some actual events.” He extended the time of his various employments, invented fictional summer associate positions at law firms, falsely claimed that he was admitted to practice in Connecticut and Missouri, and then got really creative. Zaidi falsely claimed to have a master of liberal arts from Harvard, and that he was a member of the U.S. field hockey squad that competed in the 1996 Olympics. He also had a website that represented that his law firm, Great Lakes Legal Group, was working with multiple lawyers at several locations around the country. There was no law firm. Zaidi admitted to disciplinary authorities that it was just an “idea that is still in progress.”
The lawyer did not endear himself to the disciplinary board by trying to avoid his hearing. First he claimed he couldn’t attend because of one child’s birthday party, and then swore that he couldn’t find child care on the scheduled date. The hearing went on without him. Zaidi later claimed in a petition for review that he missed the hearing because his daughter was recovering from surgery. The board was unsympathetic. Given his fantastic resumé, the board must have wondered if his “children” were like Harvey the rabbit or Norman Bates’ mother.
“So there’s no question that I made misrepresentations on my resume. I was not a summer associate where I listed where I was a summer associate at. And the reason for that was, to be quite frank, there’s no good reason for it. I understand that was wrongdoing on my part. And I need to be sanctioned for that, which is why I’m here. But at the same time, I just want to draw attention to the fact as to what I did incorrect or what I did wrong or what my wrongdoing specifically was. I wanted to create an impression because of personal circumstances of what had gone on. . .. What I was trying to accomplish was that I was scared nobody would hire me if they realized why I was moving around so much. And I wanted to create this impression of longevity and create this impression of consistency of my movements.”
Well that explains it, then!
Said the board in its sanction order…
“It is interesting to note that the parts of respondent’s resume that have not been proven false in these proceedings are quite impressive. However, whatever the truth may be, the doctored versions are more impressive…”
(As a complete tangential aside, this reasoning nicely rejects one of the popular rationalizations for electing Barry Bonds to the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame: yes, he cheated by using steroids, but he didn’t need to. He was a great player already. Yeah, but just as lying made the lawyer’s good credentials better, the player’s cheating overwhelmed the legitimate achievements. I’d disbar Barry Bonds in a heartbeat,)
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Pointer and Facts: ABA Journal
Ethics Alarms 
Here’s the issue I DIDN’T post on to give readers a break from all the Trump-related stuff: “Chemerinsky, other scholars to file suit claiming emoluments clause violations by Trump”
I’m trying….
What the heck, post on it anyway.
Maybe just set aside a post a day at most for everything that’s happened since the last post. I predict a lot of common elements in any case.
It boils down to Article III standing.
“Bill Richardson”
Fifty years ago, half the old men in America had played a few games in the big leagues, way back when. Along came the Baseball Encyclopedia, and they all turned into minor leaguers. Along came the internet….
Ali Zaidi is a compulsive liar, he won’t change. He’ll go lie somewhere else to get another job, heck he’ll probably use the job he was just removed from on his resumé assuming that they either won’t bother to check it and if they do most companies have a policy to just confirm that he person worked there and will give no more information for fear of defamation law suits – the ends justify the means to Ali Zaidi.
Wow, he managed to pass the bar and couldn’t write a more articulate brief than that?
You know, that once would have been a surprise, but no longer.
Now don’t yell at me, Jack, but given his ability to lie with a straight face, he’d be very effective at making closing statements as defense counsel. Just kidding, mostly. At a minimum, he’d be great at playing defense council on a Law and Order episode.
Jack,
“I’m trying….”
You’ve already failed. I’m with Zoltar: post it — your ilk will eat it up.
-Neil
Don’t refer to my “ilk,” again, unless you have the guts to be direct and accept the consequences. A backhanded slur, and a gratuitous insult: sorry, I don’t accept either here. I think Zoltar felt it is a valid ethics issue, which it is. Tell you what: I’ll see you in 30 days, Neil. Til then, you can sit in the corner, read the blog silently, or not at all, I don’t give a damn.
“Ilk…”
Neil A. Dorr wrote, “I’m with Zoltar: post it — your ilk will eat it up.”
Don’t ever include me in one of your smears like that again; I didn’t say or imply anything resembling “your ilk will eat it up”.
Jack is a much more diplomatic man than I am; I’m glad he addressed your comment before I saw it.
There is one answer to resume fraud; conviction and for the more serious cases jail time.
In 2002 in New Zealand a man got eight months jail for lying on his resume. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=2043885
That Bar did the right thing, clearly. This man sounds like a true fabulist in the psychiatric sense of the term, and to leave him in a position of trust would be completely irresponsible.
Lighter note: Even telling whole truth on a resume can hurt you. My favorite example here. A friend of mine was a summer associate at Fulbright & Jaworski, and while there helped to scan resumes from recent law school graduates applying for jobs with the firm. One, who had impeccable credentials — Ivy League, Law Review, the right internships, etc. — for some reason also felt compelled to add at the end: “I also skipped the second grade.”
That resume, with that statement highlighted, stayed on the firm refrigerator for months, and the applicant’s name was known to everyone there. He didn’t get the job.