Nebraska Attorney Disbarred for Longtime Trust Account Violations

A Nebraska attorney who commingled funds and had numerous overdrafts on her attorney trust account over a more than five-year period was disbarred by the state’s highest court.

“This court considers commingling of client funds with an attorney’s own funds to be a matter of gravest concern in reviewing claims of lawyer misconduct,” the Nebraska Supreme Court said in its Feb. 21 opinion.

Jackie L. Barfield, who had a solo practice in Omaha, used her trust account as both a business and personal account, the court said. She “regularly” withdrew cash or paid her personal bills directly from the trust account, the court said.

She paid insufficient fund charges for at least 23 overdrafts on her attorney trust account since 2013, it said.

Commingling client and personal funds is a “dangerous and unfortunately common basis for disciplinary action,” according to the court, which said it’s necessary to send a “clear and strong message” on the matter.

Only “extraordinary mitigating circumstances” would prevent imposing a sanction of disbarment, and this standard wasn’t met in Barfield’s case, it said.

Barfield cooperated throughout the disciplinary proceedings and showed remorse for her conduct, the court noted.

And though her efforts over the years to provide affordable representation to lower-income clients are “laudable,” they’re “insufficient both to rebut the presumption of disbarment for commingling and to substantially outweigh the aggravating factors,” it said.

These include being disciplined in 2000 for a trust account violation and the current misconduct, which wasn’t a one-time event, but rather a years-long, “continuous pattern of commingling client funds,” the court said.

Barfield’s acts reflect a “general failure to fully comprehend the serious nature of such conduct,” it said.

The case is State ex rel. Counsel for Discipline of the Neb. Supreme Court v. Barfield, 2020 BL 62890, Neb., No. S-19-204, 2/21/20.