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VSB search panel backs Davis for bar counsel

Council to vote on 15-year vet of system at its June 19 confab

A Virginia State Bar search committee is recommending that Edward L. “Ned” Davis, an assistant bar counsel for almost 15 years, head the VSB’s disciplinary system.

The appointment of Davis as bar counsel, the formal title for the head of the VSB’s Professional Regulation Depart-ment, is subject to approval by the attorney general and the VSB Council. Council will vote on the appointment on June 19.

Davis, 55, would succeed George W. Chabalewski, who will step down next month after two years in the job.

VSB Executive Director Karen A. Gould said Davis “has a proven record of prosecuting cases in the bar’s disciplinary system, as well as extensive management experience in the Army Reserve. He is a fair person who will oversee the disciplinary system with great strength of character.”

The chairman of the search committee, VSB President Howard W. Martin Jr., said, “I am confident that he will expedite movement of disciplinary cases through the system, so that the public will be protected and cases against lawyers will be handled fairly and expeditiously.”

A native of Richmond, Davis is a graduate of the College of William and Mary and the University of Richmond law school. After graduating from law school, Davis entered the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps and prosecuted cases at Fort Riley in Kansas and served as senior defense counsel at Fort Lee during his six years of active duty.

Davis remains active in the Army Reserves and expects to retire in September with the rank of colonel. He earned a master’s degree in strategic studies from the U.S. Army War College.

After active military duty, Davis worked as a prosecutor in York County and in private practice in Richmond with a focus on criminal defense and domestic relations law. He joined the VSB as an assistant bar counsel in 1993.

His wife, Amy Holt Davis, is an in-house counsel to Anthem insurance company. The couple has five children.

Davis would supervise about 40 employees in the professional regulation department. The department is responsible for investigating and prosecuting allegations of professional misconduct by lawyers and for overseeing regulation of legal ethics, lawyer advertising and unauthorized practice of law. He would report to Gould and to the Standing Committee on Lawyer Discipline.

During his tenure at the VSB, Davis has prosecuted high-profile cases that involved receiverships and other complex matters. He has been assigned to disciplinary committees throughout the state, most recently in Norfolk and Virginia Beach, and has prosecuted cases before the VSB Disciplinary Board and three-judge courts.

“Our job is to protect the public,” Davis said. “At the same time, we have a duty to treat each attorney fairly.… By and large, this office does a very good job of accomplishing that.”

Disciplinary matters come up most frequently when a lawyer fails to look for help when he needs it from another attorney or from the VSB’s ethics hotline, Davis said.

He emphasized that the VSB’s intake mechanism frequently advises attorneys informally to respond to such complaints as a failure to communicate with a client as a way of heading off more serious disciplinary action. The department also attempts to resolve complaints by agreement “to protect those aggrieved clients and to get the lawyer on the right path,” he said.

For more serious cases, such as thefts by lawyers, the VSB has the legal tools “to stop the bleeding quickly,” he said.

“We have to look very closely at trust accounts overdrafts,” which must be reported to the VSB, he said. “If a lawyer says, ‘We fixed it,’ we need strict proof” even in the absence of complaint from a client.

In a recent case from Virginia Beach, Troy A. Titus repeatedly overdrew his trust account but assured the bar that no one had been harmed and that he was getting the account in order. Only after Titus failed to do so and surrendered his license did the VSB learn of apparent misappropriations. Titus has not been charged criminally but judgments totaling more than $2 million have been entered against him and three clients have received the maximum payment of $50,000 from the Clients’ Protection Fund.

“We’re very interested in implementing a random trust account program,” Davis said. A major part of the program would be educating lawyers on the proper way to set up and monitor a trust account, he said.

Dealing with lawyers who have not met their ethical obligations has not diminished his respect for the profession, Davis said. “The most honorable people I’ve met are lawyers. I’ve learned so many lessons, not just in integrity, but in diligence and conscientiousness from lawyers.”

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