Law School Online

[eLearner]

You may have a personal (higher) standard for competence and you may apply that standard when you are hiring an attorney but your standard does not apply to all attorneys.  You do not have the authority to officially state that an attorney is incompetent.  Or at least, your opinion in the matter doesn't actually alter the attorney's ability to practice.

I can't speak for ss20ts, but my take wasn't about what you wrote there at all, but since you mentioned it, your view on that isn't accurate because a client's position on an Attorney--if proven to be in violation of the standards of competence set by a state/bar association--can indeed alter an Attorney's ability to practice. 

Besides that, you're overlooking a number of key points: competence is measured post-license in a number of other ways that don't necessarily have to do with the personal standard of any individual client. For instance, if an Attorney works for a firm, his/her competence will certainly be measured through the production, accuracy of production, and outcomes they produce and that will determine career trajectories, salaries, and even the possible position of keeping or losing their jobs. Plenty lawyers wash out because competence has to be proven over the course of one's career at each stage and it's always a challenge: in school, through state exams for licensing, and during the course of a career in practice post-license. Each stage has different requirements and expectations for that competence to be demonstrated.

Then there is state involvement during practice. Each state/bar association specifically processes and keeps track of infractions and disciplinary actions for Attorney's that ultimately can and does determine whether an Attorney is competent enough to continue practicing law in that given state or not. Some of these infractions may be matters of incompetence, some may stem from forms of determined misconduct which can also be the result of incompetence, and other issues can be either brought up through client complaints or the court actions of a judge.

So the point I was making is this: what constitutes competence pre-license differs post-license by nature of the differences in environment, circumstances and expectations between the two.