In my new book titled “Minority Viewpoint – my experience, as a person of color, with the American Justice System”, I discuss the issue of what can a client do if he/she believes that there were a number of errors and omissions on the part of their lawyer. After being dissatisfied with my meeting with the managing partner of the law firm, I decided to take my complaint to the MN Lawyers Professional Responsibility Board (LPRB).
However, I was truly disappointed with my interactions with the MN LPRB, not because they decided not to investigate my complaint, but because of what I perceive as their lack of adequate communication to me, the person who made the complaint, and also because of their apparent lack of willingness to truly understand what the complaints were all about.
At least their first response to my complaint was 3 pages long (more than just a couple of sentences). However, after reviewing their response it was clear to me that in a number of areas they failed to truly understand what I was complaining about. I was specifically disturbed when I noticed that my complaint about “lack of adequate information for informed consent” was viewed by them as “poor communication”!
After their first review of my complaint, it seemed to me that on a number of issues the board’s understanding was not what I had intended to communicate. The board never called me to understand my complaint better. There was no phone interview or an in-person interview. So I decided to file an appeal which is allowed by the board. The response came back from Virginia Klevorn, who had apparently reviewed the appeal. Unfortunately the response back was only a few sentences long and was most disappointing. I believe it was reasonable for me to expect a longer and more elaborate explanation of why my complaints were not investigated further.