Lawyer Lands in Ethics Trouble After Cousin Spiffs Up Law Firm Website with Certification Seal
The New Jersey Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Monday in the ethics case of an employment lawyer whose website displayed a certification seal though he wasn’t certified.
Employment lawyer Ty Hyderally says he was unaware that the website for his 14-lawyer employment firm displayed the seal until he was contacted by disciplinary authorities, the New Jersey Law Journal reports. The seal had been displayed there for two years.
Hyderally’s cousin had found the seal in a Google search and placed it on the website because he thought it was visually appealing. None of the lawyers in Hyderally’s firm had certification.
The Disciplinary Review Board had dismissed ethics charges, saying ethics regulators had failed to refute Hyderally’s claim that the mistake was inadvertent. The state supreme court decided on its own to hear the case, the story says.
