Lawyer suspended for trying to attend 2 online CLE programs at once
According to a Sept. 11 sanctions order, a Connecticut lawyer was trying to get credit for two live webcasts that happened at the same time on June 16, 2022. Image from Shutterstock.
A lawyer’s Maine law license has been suspended after he tried to get continuing legal education credit for attending online programs that happened at the same time.
The lawyer, Jason R. Buckley of Bloomfield, Connecticut, was suspended for a year as a result of an order by a justice of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, the Legal Profession Blog reports. He will have to seek court approval for reinstatement.
The allegations were deemed to be admitted after Buckley defaulted in the ethics case.
According to the Sept. 11 sanctions order, Buckley had submitted proof of CLE credits in 2023 to reinstate his law license after an administrative suspension. The material showed that Buckley was trying to get credit for two live webcasts that happened at the same time on June 16, 2022.
Buckley said in an initial response he had attended the two programs using a computer and an iPad. He said he didn’t realize that simultaneous attendance was a violation of bar rules.
The bar counsel later received additional information that, on June 17, 2022, Buckley attended a four-hour-and-40-minute webcast that began at 12:39 p.m. and viewed an on-demand six-hour-and-39-minute CLE that began at 1:06 p.m.
The order by Justice Thomas McKeon of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court cited an earlier case in which a lawyer received a one-year suspension for relying on his assistant to take his CLE classes.
The Connecticut Judicial Branch shows that a lawyer named Jason Russell Buckley has an office in Bloomfield, Connecticut, at Bondi Band, a fashionable headband company founded by Rebecca Buckley.
The ABA Journal left a voicemail seeking comment after calling the posted number. There was no immediate response.
