NJ Supremes Censure Associate Who Submitted Fudged Transcripts to Two Law Firms
The New Jersey Supreme Court has censured a former associate who inflated his grades on transcripts submitted to two law firms: Herrick Feinstein and Sills Cummis & Gross.
Herrick Feinstein’s managing partner contacted disciplinary authorities after the firm discovered Philip Prothro had changed his grade in constitutional law at Rutgers Law School from a C+ to an A, report the Legal Professional Blog and the Am Law Daily.
When Prothro was hired by Herrick Feinstein, he submitted a photocopy of his law school transcript with the A grade in con law, according to an Aug. 4 disciplinary review board opinion (PDF) attached to the supreme court decision.
The law firm asked for an original transcript, but it took Prothro a year to submit it. When he did so, he attached a Post-It note to the transcript with a message for someone named “Elise”; the “E” was written partly on the transcript, right over the con law grade. Someone at the Herrick firm was able to discern the C+ grade by holding the transcript to the light.
An ethics investigator then asked Prothro if he had altered the transcripts submitted to his prior firm, Sills Cummis, where he worked as a full-time associate from 2004 to 2008. Prothro said he had not done so. Actually, he had changed his grades in torts and legal research and writing from a B to a B+, and from a C+ to a B- in con law. Prothro blamed his “desultory lack of attention to detail” and said he likely misrecorded the grades.
The disciplinary review board had split on whether the appropriate punishment was a censure or a three-month suspension. The New Jersey Supreme Court opted for the lighter penalty when it censured Prothro on Oct. 5.
The Legal Profession Blog questioned the penalty. “What has happened to practice standards in New Jersey that a pattern of dishonesty such as proven here results in a censure?” the blog asks. “I suspect that those disadvantaged by employment-related grade inflation dishonesty would take a dim view of this result.”
