Divorce lawyer censured by bar

Conflict of interests cited

RALEIGH -- Lee S. Rosen, a Raleigh attorney who runs one of the largest divorce law firms in the state, was censured by the N.C State Bar for billing and representation practices at his firm.

Rosen, who has offices in Raleigh, Durham and Charlotte, was censured by the bar's Grievance Committee after the agency received three complaints about Rosen's firm.

The censure doesn't affect Rosen's license to practice law, but the disciplinary panel encouraged him to "ponder this censure, recognize the error that you have made, and that you will never again allow yourself to depart from adherence to the high ethical standards of the legal profession."

Rosen was chastised for the practice in his office of having a lawyer initially meet with a client and then pass off the case to another lawyer without fully explaining that to the client.

He was also criticized for his office's agreement to represent a woman knowing that the woman lived in a county where Rosen Law Firm did not practice. And he was criticized for his office doing initial consultations with people only to represent their estranged spouses later, creating a conflict of interest.

The censure was issued on March 5 but not placed on the bar's Web site, www.ncbar.com, where the public can search lawyer's profiles to see whether lawyers have any disciplinary records. It still was not up as of Friday evening.

The failure to put the censure on the Web site was an oversight, said Dottie Miani, a staff person with the State Bar.

Rosen said he interpreted the censures as the bar's way of clarifying his office's business model, which prides itself on offering clients fixed prices instead of the traditional hourly billings.

Agreements in which attorneys work to resolve conflicts outside court generally cost a client $6,000 to $10,000, Rosen said. If a case goes to trial, it could cost from $35,000 to $40,000, and clients have to sign a new contract, Rosen said.

He also said local lawyers may be sore at his success.

"We are not loved by our competitors," Rosen said. "People don't like the fact that we drive change in the marketplace."

But Robert Howard, a Raleigh lawyer who has been practicing domestic law for 37 years, said that's not the case. He said former clients of Rosen's law firm often come to him dissatisfied with how they were treated and what they were charged.

He criticized the firm's decision to make a person choose up front whether or not to take a case to court. Such decisions aren't always clear at first, Howard said.

"The lawyer doesn't know until he or she gets in the case what the remedy will be," Howard said.

"They were charging them these large sums of money."