Chapter 104: Dan Forsythe's Confession
Dan Forsythe submitted the voluntary disclosure to the bar association on a Monday, which he had chosen because Monday had a quality of beginning that made it easier to do things he had been putting off for longer than he should have.
The disclosure was not required. Nothing in the bar association’s rules mandated a voluntary accounting of the kind he was providing. He was submitting it because he had, over the preceding six months, arrived at the conclusion that his professional conduct in the Carter matters had been inadequate in ways he was responsible for, and that the appropriate response to that conclusion was to place it on the record himself rather than wait for someone else to place it there.
The disclosure described his representation of Ryan Carter across the period of the litigation and his eventual resignation. It described the conflict of interest he had cited in his resignation letter — which had been real, if incompletely characterized. He had become aware, during the Vantage Legal proceedings, that entities connected to the opposing trust structure had relationships with a client of his firm’s that predated the Carter matter. He had withdrawn on that basis. The withdrawal had been legally appropriate.
What the disclosure also noted was that his earlier work on the Carter matters had not met the standard of diligence that would have served his client better. He had failed to fully trace the Apex facility’s ownership structure when he first had the opportunity. He had cleared the covenant notation from a client’s credit file with an incomplete verification that had left the derogatory record standing longer than necessary. He had not flagged the potential significance of the Luxembourg entity connection early enough to be useful.
None of these failures had risen to the level of actionable malpractice under the standard definitions. He was not submitting the disclosure expecting sanctions. He was submitting it because the attorney conflict of interest he had cited at withdrawal had been accurate but insufficient — the full picture of his representation had been more compromised by ordinary inadequacy than by the specific conflict, and he believed the bar association’s record should reflect that distinction.
The bar association acknowledged receipt. A review committee would determine within sixty days whether any further proceedings were warranted.
Dan Forsythe did not expect further proceedings. He expected a letter of acknowledgment and a file notation.
He had submitted the disclosure anyway.
He thought about Ryan Carter occasionally — not with guilt, which required a level of moral certainty he could not justify, but with the specific discomfort of someone who understands that doing adequate work and doing good work are not the same thing and that, in the Carter matters, he had consistently delivered the former.
He poured a cup of coffee.
He returned to the work on his desk.
He was more careful now than he had been then. That was the most he could offer.