Lawyer Suspended in Virginia Gets Disbarred in D.C.

A lawyer who was suspended for one year in Virginia for several trust account violations was disbarred in neighboring Washington after the jurisdiction’s highest court refused to impose reciprocal discipline.

Explaining its decision, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals said Wednesday that the misconduct found by the Virginia Bar’s disciplinary board “would result in the substantially different sanction of disbarment in this jurisdiction.”

Attorney James Stephen Del Sordo was punished after it came to light in 2017 that he’d been paying personal expenses including charges related to his sons’ college expenses, from his firm’s operating and trust accounts, the court said.

His firm, Argus Legal LLC, has offices in Manassas, Virginia and in the Washington suburb of McLean..

A bookkeeper who looked into matters found a shortfall of $21,074.99 in the trust account, that no trust account reconciliations had been performed, and that some deposits had been made into the wrong account.

After an investigation by the Virginia Bar, Del Sordo testified that the payments he made to himself from the law firm’s operating and trust accounts had been earned and he “simply paid himself as the year went along rather than waiting until the end to do a formal reconciliation,” the court said.

He also admitted he didn’t do the required reconciliations but did the math “in his head” and therefore knew what he was owed.

In addition to those trust account violations, the state bar found he acted dishonestly in bankruptcy filings by “grossly understating” his income, the court said.

Del Sordo has had a disciplinary history for trust account violations including a private reprimand in 2004 and a public admonition in 2012, it said. His conduct in the current matter included intentional and reckless acts “that would require disbarment in our jurisdiction,” the capital’s appellate court said.

Even though Del Sordo’s partner restored the missing trust account funds from the firm’s operating account and Del Sordo said they didn’t use the trust account for most of their clients, “these points do not change our conclusion, because our case law does not make the appropriateness of disbarment as a sanction dependent” on these factors,” it said.

For purposes of reinstatement, it set his date of disbarment as July 23, 2019, when Del Sordo filed his affidavit with the D.C. Bar.

The case is In re Del Sordo, 2020 BL 139217, D.C., No. 19-BG-473, 4/15/20