Can Kentucky Bar police its own?

On Wednesday, the Kentucky Bar Association will open its annual convention here in Lexington with the admirable theme "Justice for All."

It's a particularly timely and poignant theme in light of the ongoing revelations about one Kentucky lawyer, Eric C. Conn, and hundreds of his clients.

Most professions in most places do a really bad job of policing themselves, and lawyers in Kentucky are no exception, as Conn proves.

In October 2013, after the release of a devastating report on Conn's Social Security disability practice by a U.S. Senate committee, the KBA, which enforces professional standards for attorneys, decided to take a look at Conn.

"If what is being said is true, that could affect his license. It's too early to say," KBA counsel Thomas Glover said.

Among the charges in the Senate report were that Conn used "whore doctors" to sign medical reports on people they'd never examined and, when investigators got interested, burned computers and hired a document shredding firm to destroy about 2 million papers.

By then, Conn also had made an illegal campaign contribution to Kentucky Supreme Court Justice Will T. Scott and paid to produce a music CD by Pike District Judge Darrel Mullins, whom Conn also paid to perform at a wedding reception.

Since then, of course, we know that about 900 of Conn's clients have been notified by the Social Security Administration that their benefits are in danger because of suspected fraudulent medical information in their claims.

Conn is the subject of lawsuits alleging legal malpractice in Kentucky and West Virginia, and a whistle-blower lawsuit by two former Social Security employees alleging that Conn and an SSA administrative law judge defrauded the federal government.

That is by no means exhaustive, list of the known allegations against Conn.

Although Conn himself has not been seen lately in Floyd County — reports put him in Hollywood or the Bahamas — his law office there remains open because he can, of course, practice law in Kentucky.

Justice for all is an ambitious goal. Right now, we bet, hundreds of Eric Conn's former clients would be happier if they thought the KBA was drawing a line against any attorney engaged in such questionable practices.

This story was originally published June 16, 2015 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Can Kentucky Bar police its own?."