"We understand the procedures and applicable ethical codes."
Most law office websites offer a similar mixture of braggadocio and boilerplate, and bennettlawfirm.com is no exception.
“Attorney Bob Bennett understands the strain that defending professional license in Houston can place on a person,” the site assures prospective clients.
You can assume Bennett had this understanding, since helping professionals defend their licenses is one of the firm’s main practice areas. In addition Bennett should know all about strain since he recently had to defend his own license.
Professionals defending their licenses could use an attorney who not only “has been providing professional license defense in Texas to lawyers, judges, and medical professionals for over a decade,” but actually has been through the ordeal himself.
One problem: Bob Bennett won’t be representing anyone any time soon. He’s just lost his law license. He’s been disbarred – for engaging in questionable practices that led to the understandable “strain” of having to defend his license.
Bennett is “prohibited from practicing law in Texas, holding himself out as an attorney at law, performing any legal services for others, accepting any fee directly or indirectly for legal services, appearing as counsel or in any representative capacity in any proceeding in any Texas court or before any administrative body or holding himself out to others or using his name, in any manner, in conjunction with the words ‘attorney at law,’ ‘attorney,’ ‘counselor at law,’ or ‘lawyer.’”
Bennett was accused of violating the Texas Disciplinary Rules of Professional Conduct.
Concluding that Bennett had failed to return part of a retainer due to a client and had purposely manipulated the legal system to delay repayment, District Judge Carmen Kelsey of San Antonio signed a final judgment of disbarment last month.
That judgment casts doubt on the veracity of this boast from bennettlawfirm.com: “We understand the procedures and applicable ethical codes by which Texas professionals must abide.”