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Update: Bar clears UO lawyers over handling of Jane Doe’s counseling records

6/23/2015 update: Diane Dietz’s story, with some interesting comments, is here:

On June 18, the bar’s initial investigation found there was no evidence that Hill and Park did anything “obviously illegal or fraudulent” in taking the counseling records.

However, the bar took “no position” on the major question of whether it was legally permissible for the attorneys to take the records, according to the letter by Troy Wood, an assistant general counsel for the Oregon State Bar.

Neither of the university lawyers responded to requests for comment on Monday.

The earlier Woolington story is here. Park has said that he has returned the hard copies of the records to the counseling center, but I don’t think it’s ever been explained what was done to protect the security of the copies that GC staff scanned an put on their server.

6/19/2015: It’s never a surprise when a professional association takes the side of its members. Rich Read has the latest in the Oregonian:

An Oregon State Bar division has cleared two University of Oregon lawyers of professional-misconduct allegations in the handling of a student’s mental health records.

Troy Wood, assistant general counsel at the state agency that regulates the legal profession, dismissed the complaints in a letter Thursday to Jennifer Morlok, a clinician whom he identified as the therapist for a UO student who says she was raped by three basketball players last year. Wood wrote that he was responding to a complaint filed by Morlok against UO lawyers Douglas Park, interim general counsel, and Samantha Hill, associate general counsel.

Wood wrote that the Bar’s Client Assistance Office could find no evidence that  Park and Hill violated a rule of professional conduct by obtaining the student’s therapy records from the University Counseling & Testing Center.

“We find the evidence is insufficient to support a conclusion that it was obviously illegal or fraudulent for the university’s lawyers to take custody of the UCTC file,” Wood wrote. “We have no evidence that the university’s lawyers knew it was illegal or fraudulent to do so.”

It was interesting to learn, from the Bar decision letter, that UO employees are not supposed to talk to lawyers without Doug Park’s permission:

Screen Shot 2015-06-19 at 10.06.06 AM

Is that in the Legal Services Policy? Do we have a Legal Services Policy? Anyway, UO strategic communicator Tobin Klinger sure sounds happy:

“The university has known all along that the individuals named in the complaints are professionals who carry out their responsibilities with honesty and integrity, and we are glad to see that the Oregon State Bar agrees,” Tobin Klinger wrote in an email. “We now look forward to a similar finding for those under discussion by the Oregon Board of Psychologist Examiners.”

2 Comments

  1. just different 06/19/2015

    The key phrase is “obviously illegal or fraudulent.” No bar association is ever going to make being a sleazy loophole artist a violation of professional ethics.

  2. brrrrrrrrrrrrrrr 06/23/2015

    I don’t think the University’s policy requiring GC permission to talk is odd. I think the opposing counsel contacting the employee is odd. They probably shouldn’t have reached out directly to a represented client without permission for UO’s attorneys.

    http://www.osbar.org/publications/bulletin/11apr/barcounsel.html

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