Every year, the LADB publishes valuable data on Attorney Discipline in Louisiana. The statistics for 2025 demonstrate a noteworthy shift that Louisiana lawyers will want to absorb. Two years have passed since Anderson “Andy” O. Dotson was appointed by the LADB as Chief Disciplinary Counsel. Comparing the data from the past two years with prior years, we can infer a slight shift.
The clearest signal is a renewed focus on the basics: MCLE and Dues Violations are being affirmatively alleged as misconduct in disciplinary complaints. The statistics from 2016 to 2024 show these types of violations were either not alleged or categorized in this manner.
In 2024, Dues Violations (27), MCLE Violations (79), and Trust Account Violations (15) were counted for the first time in the last 10 years of data. In 2025, Dues Violations jumped to 108 and Trust Account Violations to 57, while MCLE Violations fell from 79 to 31. From this we can conclude that lawyers who fail to pay bar dues or meet the minimum CLE requirements will likely find themselves the subject of disciplinary complaints. These can easily be avoided by timely meeting the basic yearly requirements.
As to the specific type of misconduct alleged in complaints more broadly, the data spans virtually every category of misconduct, but it clusters predictably around core sets of concerns: lack of communication, neglect, incompetence, misrepresentation, and fee disputes. With some variations, these categories usually dominate the complaint data year after year. A second cluster worth noting involves conflicts of interest, scope of representation issues, and failures to return a client’s file. These tend to reflect problems at the beginning and end of a representation. As we often discuss, conflicts screening, clear engagement letters, and a proper file-closing process can address these issues before they ever reach the complaint stage.
On complaints filed and closed, the numbers have been remarkably stable over the past decade. Filings peaked around 2,900 in 2016, dipped during COVID (dropping to around 1,850 in 2020), and rebounded by 2022 to around 2,340–2,430, where they have held relatively steady through 2025.
The attorney status changes page is mostly unremarkable, with one notable exception. The number of attorneys rendered ineligible for bar dues violations spiked sharply in 2024, jumping from a fairly stable range of 300–390 in prior years to over 600. By 2025, that number dropped back down to around 375. The most natural reading of that pattern is that the 2024 spike was enforcement (signaling to lawyers who ignored these obligations that the rules would be enforced) and that it worked. One other oddity in the 2025 data: apparently no attorney in Louisiana retired from practice last year. The retirement figure, which had ranged from 16 to 70 in prior years, shows zero retirements in 2025. It is unclear whether this reflects a change in how the category is tracked or something else entirely.
The categories of complainant have remained stable over the years. As is typical, the vast majority of complaints come from past clients (consistently the largest category of complainant by a wide margin). What is worth watching is a steady rise in complaints filed by an “unrelated party.” That category climbed to 193 in 2024 and 275 in 2025, the highest in the dataset. One plausible explanation is that AI tools like ChatGPT and other LLMs have simply made it easier to write and file a complaint. A person who witnesses or learns of potential attorney misconduct but who previously might not have bothered to navigate the complaint process now has a tool that can (with varying degrees of sophistication) draft the complaint for them in minutes.
Finally, 18 lawyers were reinstated or readmitted to the practice of law in 2025, down from a record high of 33 in 2024.
