My chosen profession of legal ethics has not been covering itself with glory lately.

The Iowa Supreme Court suspended 68-year-old lawyer David L. Leitner as explained in a discouraging story in the Iowa Capital Dispatch. He’s out of the practice of law for two years: I would have disbarred him. First, Leitner represented an Iowa seed dealer who was convicted of bankruptcy fraud in 2007 after the lawyer helped him hide assets. Leitner created a company for the seed dealer with himself the company’s manager , allowing the seed dealer to send part of his income to the company while hiding it from the government, which the dealer owed about $71,000. (Can’t help clients try to defraud the government. Can’t go into fake businesses with clients designed to cheat on taxes. Pretty basic legal ethics.)

Leitner pulled another slimy trick by secretly adding a stipulation to a child custody agreement the opposing lawyer had put in a PDF based on terms adopted in a mediation. Leitner added a provision benefiting his client, had his client sign the altered agreement, and returned the document to the opposing counsel, who filed it filed with the district court without noticing the change. This is wildly unethical, and every lawyer knows it.

The disciplinary complaint alleged that Leitner had violated other rules too, such as those covering regarding conflicts of interest, contact with represented parties and client trust accounts. As is so often the case with unethical lawyers, the Iowa Supreme Court found that this one was evasive about the extent of his misconduct and refused to take responsibility for the worst of it.

But here’s my favorite part: Leitner argued that his unethical lawyering should be considered mitigated by the fact that he had authored ethics articles for many publications, and thus “had contributed to the profession.” The Iowa Supreme Court’s Attorney Disciplinary Board replied that his logic was “particularly eyebrow-raising when his misconduct involves financial fraud.” In other words, “You’ve got to be kidding!”

I’d view Leitner as a dangerous lawyer for even making such a hypocritical argument and thinking it could be persuasive. If anything, a supposed legal ethics expert who flagrantly violates the ethics rules is worse than normal, everyday dishonest lawyers, many of whom are as likely to have read the Rules of Professional Conduct recently as “War and Peace” in Esperanto. Leitner knew what the rules were; he just decided to break them for his own benefit.

In Leitner’s honor, I’m adding a new clip to the Ethics Alarms Hollywood Clip Archive, this one from “Back to the Future 3.” Marty has this ethics expert pegged: