It’s not easy being an immigration lawyer (at least the kind who serves individual clients; I’m not talking about corporate-focused shops like Fragomen). You have many clients to service — often desperate, stressed-out, financially strapped clients — and they generally pay you a flat fee for handling a particular matter. That might be fine if the case is straightforward and can be handled using existing templates. But if the matter is more complex, you could end up spending dozens of hours working on something you’re getting paid just a few thousand dollars to handle.

These pressures, while serious and real, do not give you a license to phone it in. You somehow need to find a way to provide your clients with adequate representation while keeping the lights on at your practice. If you cut corners badly enough and for long enough, be prepared to face the wrath of judges.

Yesterday a panel of the Tenth Circuit, in an order by Judge Neil Gorsuch, administered brutal benchslaps to an immigration lawyer named John E. Reardon Sr., counsel to one Santiago Alejandre-Gallegos. Here’s a handy little “what not do do on appeal” primer, taken from the order:

Now before us, Mr. Alejandre-Gallegos seeks to undo this decision but his attorney fails to give us any grounds on which we might. Counsel suggests the BIA relied on improper evidence but doesn’t supply any citations to the record where it went wrong on the facts (despite Fed. R. App. P. 28(a)(8)(A)). He suggests that the BIA applied the wrong legal standards but doesn’t cite any legal authority that might remotely support his claim. He even spends pages discussing another criminal charge against his client irrelevant to the one on which the BIA relied. Neither are counsel’s shortcomings confined to such important things. His statement of related cases actually includes argument (in defiance of 10th Cir. R. 28.2(C)(1)). He does not “cite the precise reference in the record where [each of his issues] was raised and ruled on” (as required by 10th Cir. R. 28.2(C)(2)) and his statement of the case includes no record citations at all (as required by Fed. R. App. P. 28(a)(6)). His brief contains no “summary of the argument.” Fed. R. App. P. 28(a)(7). He hasn’t even bothered to “alphabetically arrange[]” his table of authorities. Fed. R. App. P. 28(a)(3)). We could go on.

And the court does go on, much to Reardon’s chagrin (citations omitted):

Essentially, counsel pronounces that the BIA mistook the facts and acted in defiance of law and leaves it to the court to go fish for facts and law that might possibly support his claim. This, of course, the court has no obligation and is poorly positioned to do. In our adversarial system, neutral and busy courts rely on lawyers to develop and present in an intelligible format the facts and law to support their arguments and “[t]he adversarial process cannot properly function when one party ignores its obligations under the rules.” For that reason it’s within the court’s power “to dismiss an appeal when the appellant has failed to abide by the rules of appellate procedure.” That’s the course we find ourselves forced to take in this case. We dismiss the petition for review.

Note that Gorsuchian use of a contraction: “it’s within the court’s power.” As we’ve previously mentioned, “Word on the street is that Judge Gorsuch has his law clerks add contractions to his opinions, to make himself sound more folksy — and therefore more appealing as a possible SCOTUS nominee.”

Back to the benchslappery. This is the part where Judge Gorsuch, like a parent spanking a child (to the extent that parents still do that today), gives the “this hurts me more than it hurts you” speech:

We confess reluctance about having to proceed so summarily and about having to chastise a professional colleague in this way. Everyone makes mistakes, and surely judges no less than lawyers. But the shortcomings here don’t just suggest a mistake, a few, or even a thoroughgoing disinterest in the rules of procedure. They suggest a lack of competent representation. For all we know from counsel’s garbled submission before us, his client may have a good claim or at least an arguable one: we just cannot tell. That worry occupied us so much that we decided to review counsel’s past filings in this court to see if his conduct here was (hopefully) anomalous. But the results proved even more disquieting.

Ruh-roh. Somebody’s about to get benchslapped….

[Our research] revealed that for at least a decade attorney John E. Reardon, Sr., has represented in this court immigrants seeking relief from removal — and that for at least that long his filings in this court have consistently suffered from the sort of shortcomings present in this one. It turns out that this court has noted the problem time and again. It has reminded counsel of his professional obligations. It has admonished him. All to no effect.

No more Mr. Nice Guy. It’s time for some bare-knuckle benchslaps:

At some point, this court has a duty to do more than observe, record, and warn. It has a duty to act. After reviewing the record before us, we are confident that time has more than come. Because we believe sanctions — including suspension from this court’s bar and restitution — may be appropriate, we direct the Clerk to initiate a disciplinary proceeding against Mr. Reardon. See Fed. R. App. P. 46(c); 10th Cir. R. 46.6; Tenth Circuit Plan for Attorney Disciplinary Enforcement §§ 2.3 & 3. So ordered.

And so slapped. Judge Gorsuch is an experienced benchslapper, and it shows.

There is a schadenfreude component to benchslap coverage, yes, but there’s an educational component too. First, lawyers and law students learn about what’s unacceptable conduct within the legal profession. Second, clients — especially clients who fire up the old Google machine before retaining counsel — learn about the shortcomings of certain advocates, so they can make better and more well-informed decisions about whom to hire.

Having a benchslap like this on his record — alongside discipline from Colorado too (assuming we’re dealing with the same John E. Reardon, an immigration lawyer within the Tenth Circuit) — is unfortunate for Reardon and his reputation. But it’s not as unfortunate as what his clients — including Santiago Alejandre-Gallegos, whose appeal got dismissed because of Reardon’s incompetence — have had to suffer over the years.

P.S. If you haven’t had your fill of Judge Gorsuch, who’s both a noted feeder judge and an Anderson Cooper-esque “silver fox,” watch him deliver the 13th Annual Barbara K. Olson Memorial Lecture at the 2013 National Lawyers Convention of the Federalist Society:

Alejandre-Gallegos v. Holder [U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit]

Earlier: Biglaw Litigators, Rejoice! A Circuit Court Opinion on a Discovery Dispute