Va., Tenn., Among States with No Attorney-Client Sexual Relations Ban

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By engaging in consensual sex with his Legal Aid clients, Wade Compton had not done anything improper, he informed the Virginia State Bar.

“A consensual relationship that does not influence a case is not forbidden by the rules,” Compton wrote in a June 2006 response to a complaint filed by his former employer. He demanded to know what rule he had violated.

In December, Compton agreed he violated rules relating to conflict of interest and conduct that reflects adversely on his fitness to practice law. But his original assertion – that consensual sex is not prohibited – holds true today.

Across the country, 27 state bars have adopted a rule banning sexual relations between attorneys and clients, while bars in six other states have incorporated a comparable, less-stringent variation into their standards of attorney conduct, according to the American Bar Association.

Virginia and Tennessee are among 14 states that do not specifically address the topic in their rules and guidelines.

Two experts on Virginia legal ethics consulted by the Bristol Herald Courier favor the state adopting a ban on sexual relations between attorneys and clients. A third expert said the ban is unnecessary but could aid in disciplining an attorney who engaged in improper sexual contact with a client.

A senior Virginia Bar official, speaking in general terms, said banning a type of misconduct makes it easier to prosecute the attorney who commits it.

“If any rule is specific in prohibiting any specific misconduct, then absolutely it is easier to prove” the misconduct, Edward Davis, counsel for the Virginia State Bar, told the Herald Courier.

Davis, as an assistant bar counsel 12 years ago, personally had prosecuted an attorney accused of raping his client and managed only a public reprimand.

More recently, his staff spent more than two years investigating and building a case against Lebanon, Va., attorney Compton – a result Davis touts, though he also expressed concern for how long it took to achieve.

Yet Davis seemed unaware that any state bars had a rule prohibiting attorneys from having sex with clients – even though that kind of rule would facilitate that style of prosecution.

Asked specifically about the ABA rule, Davis said, “I believe I was aware of that and I just hadn’t thought about that at this time.”

It is not clear whether the Virginia Bar’s governing body – of which Compton’s father, Eugene, is a member – has considered adopting this rule, which does not appear among proposed rules on its Web site. The 40-member Bar Council has the authority to recommend rule changes to the Virginia Supreme Court.

Eugene Compton, representing the 29th judicial circuit, would not comment on Wade Compton’s disciplinary case or legal ethics in general.

The rule

In Virginia, where Wade Compton admitted to sexual contact with four of his Legal Aid clients, the Bar offers a single sentence of instruction under the conflicts of interest rule: “A lawyer’s romantic or other intimate personal relationship can also adversely affect representation of a client.”

The ABA goes much further, advocating that state bars ban sexual relations between attorneys and clients – unless the intimate relationship predates the attorney-client relationship, as in the case of one spouse who represents another.

A sexual relationship “has the potential to undermine the objective detachment that is often demanded for adequate representation,” the ABA wrote in a 1992 paper.

All of Compton’s clients at Legal Aid lacked the financial means to hire an attorney, and several expressed a fear that if they complained, he might retaliate – a concern predicted by the ABA paper.

“The client may not feel free to rebuff unwanted sexual advances because of fear that such a rejection will either reduce the lawyer’s ardor for the client’s cause or, worse yet, require finding a new lawyer,” the authors wrote.

Several of Compton’s clients who accused him of sexual misconduct were victims of domestic violence – among the most vulnerable of women, said a victims advocate who worked closely with two of them.

“These girls didn’t have a support system of girlfriends,” Shirley Forrester, then an advocate in Tazewell County, Va., said in a recent interview. “They were not likely going to say ‘no,’ scream, or say, ‘how dare you!’ ”

Banning sex between attorneys and clients would add important clarity to Virginia’s standards for attorney conduct, some experts say.

“The advantage of it is that everyone knows where the line is,” said George Cohen, a professor at the University of Virginia Law School.

In family law cases, where clients might be emotionally vulnerable, “there’s a real concern that even if you don’t realize it, you may be subtly taking advantage of these people,” Cohen said in an interview.

As with any broad legal rule, it can be over-inclusive and might penalize “some relationships that would be relatively harmless,” Cohen said, but added he would favor a rule along the lines of the ABA prohibition.

“If there is a specific rule, could that make a difference for some people? Probably,” he said.

Michael Krauss, a legal scholar at George Mason Law School, agreed.

Though most attorneys recognize the potential of conflicts in a sexual liaison with a client, a prohibition “could discourage people from doing things they might otherwise have done,” Krauss said last week.

“Being a little more explicit” in the rules is a good thing, he said.

But Jeffrey Geiger, of the University of Richmond Law School, questioned the impact of the ABA rule.

“Would the existence of that rule stop this individual from engaging in that unethical behavior?” he asked.

From a disciplinary point of view, however, a ban might make it easier for the Bar to penalize an attorney, Geiger said.
Davis, the bar counsel, agreed.

“It probably would be easier to prosecute a charge of misconduct or regulate the profession if there were specific acts prohibited,” he said.

Damaged

In the end, the system worked to a degree – stopping a lawyer who now has admitted to being impaired from practicing law for at least five years. But for more than two years, it failed.

“It is alarming . . . that Mr. Compton appears to be preying upon vulnerable female clients during the course of his representation of them,” Larry Harley, the director of the Southwest Virginia Legal Aid Society,
wrote to the Bar on May 5, 2006.

“Additionally, Mr. Compton’s actions may have damaged the viability of our Legal Aid program as well as our ability to fulfill our mission,” wrote Harley, who was Compton’s boss.

Last week, Harley said in an interview that the program did not sustain a lasting injury as a result of Compton’s conduct. “Clients are seeking our services in high numbers,” he said.

For others, the damage has not receded so quickly.

Charissa Sturgill, who claims Compton raped her, still receives occasional threats from her ex-husband. She has not approached another attorney since her divorce was finalized by another Legal Aid lawyer – a woman. But she has applied for a concealed weapons permit.

Another former client of Compton’s, a 24-year-old Richlands woman, now wonders whether his advances drove her back into the abusive relationship she had attempted to escape. She is currently in hiding.

For Forrester, the victims advocate, the breach of trust undermined her faith in the system.

“We had worked with [Compton] for a long period of time, had faith in his legal abilities, and viewed him as an attorney who would fight for the rights of victims,” she said. “It was a terrible blow to find my trust so misplaced.”

She could not bear the thought that she referred her charges to an attorney who re-victimized them, she said.

In the summer of 2007, she left her job as an advocate.

“It was purely pathetic that I bail out,” she said.

Like the victims she once worked with, she blames herself.

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