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If Convicted, Will Eliot Spitzer be Disbarred?

New York’s rules of professional ethics contain the following provision:

DR 1-102 [1200.3] Misconduct.
A. A lawyer or law firm shall not:
...
3. Engage in illegal conduct that adversely reflects on the lawyer’s honesty, trustworthiness or fitness as a lawyer.
4. Engage in conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit, or misrepresentation.
5. Engage in conduct that is prejudicial to the administration of justice.
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7. Engage in any other conduct that adversely reflects on the lawyer’s fitness as a lawyer.

Violating the Mann Act, money laundering, and using the services of prostitutes while having prosecuted other prostitution rings all look like plausible candidates for disciplinary action under that rule.

In addition, the NY Times recently reported that NY “State law requires automatic disbarment for anyone convicted of a felony.” Actually, because Spitzer will be charged, if at all, with federal crimes, the matter seems to be a bit more complicated, as a 2007 NY opinion explains:

A conviction of a federal felony does not trigger automatic disbarment unless the offense would constitute a felony under the New York Penal Law (see Matter of Kim, 209 AD2d 127, 129 [1995]; Judiciary Law § 90 [4][e]). The federal felony need not be a “mirror image” of the New York felony in that it need not correspond in every detail, but it must be essentially similar (Matter of Margiotta, 60 NY2d 147, 150 [1983]; Matter of Shubov, 25 AD3d 33 [2005]).