An opinion on public confidence and client trust accounts
With the November elections just ahead, Lt. Governor Alan Wilson and Dr. Jermaine Johnson continue to make a plea for S.C. Judicial Reform as a centerpiece of their Fall campaign platforms. Candidates are putting a bullseye on the need for court reform in S.C. Wilson and Johnson are running for the Governor’s office.
The South Carolina Supreme Court’s decision in In re William E. Hopkins, Jr. sends a troubling message about accountability in the legal profession. The case involved an attorney who admitted transferring $95,981.46 from his trust account to cover payroll and operating expenses for his law firm. In plain terms, client money was used to keep a private business afloat.
There is no dispute that Mr. Hopkins later repaid the money. There is also no reason to dismiss the seriousness of the health challenges he presented to the Court, or the importance of treatment and rehabilitation. But repayment after discovery is not the same as never taking the money, and mitigation should not erase the central duty at issue: client funds must be protected absolutely.
That is why the ultimate result — a three-year suspension rather than disbarment — sets such a troubling precedent. A lawyer’s trust account is not a business line of credit. It is not a reserve fund to borrow from during a difficult season. It belongs to clients and must be held apart from the lawyer’s own financial pressures. When that boundary is crossed repeatedly, the injury is not measured only by whether every dollar is eventually restored. The damage is to public confidence in the profession and in the integrity of the legal system itself.
The facts make the concern even sharper. The transfers were not a single bookkeeping mistake. According to the Court’s order, there were eleven transfers over roughly eight months, totaling nearly $96,000. The conduct continued while the firm faced payroll and operating needs. That pattern is precisely why trust-account rules exist: financial stress can create pressure, but it can never justify using client property as the answer.
The Court correctly recognized that mental and physical conditions may be relevant in determining a sanction. Compassion is not weakness, and a lawyer who seeks treatment, cooperates, makes restitution, and demonstrates genuine remorse should receive appropriate consideration. Yet the discipline system has another obligation just as important: it must make unmistakably clear that client funds are inviolable.
When a lawyer repeatedly uses client money for the lawyer’s own firm, the default consequence should protect the public first. A sanction must deter other lawyers who may be tempted to rationalize a temporary “loan” from a trust account. It must reassure clients that their funds will not be put at risk when their attorney’s practice is under pressure. And it must preserve the profession’s claim to a higher standard of fiduciary responsibility.
The concern is not that the Court considered mitigation. The concern is proportionality. The Court’s earlier decision to disbar Mr. Hopkins reflected the gravity of repeated intentional misuse of entrusted funds. Replacing that result with a finite suspension risks teaching the wrong lesson: that a lawyer may use client money, restore it later, present substantial mitigation, and still return to practice after a defined period.
That is not the standard South Carolina clients deserve. The public should not have to wonder whether the money entrusted to an attorney will remain untouched when the attorney’s business is struggling. Trust accounts exist because the answer must always be yes.
South Carolina’s legal profession depends on public confidence. That confidence is strengthened when courts show mercy where it is warranted, but it is weakened when mercy obscures the seriousness of taking client funds. In this case, the message should have been simple: personal hardship may call for compassion, but it does not reduce the profession’s highest fiduciary duty. Client money is not negotiable.
This opinion addresses the public-policy implications of the disciplinary sanction in In re William E. Hopkins, Jr., Appellate Case No. 2021-000261 (S.C. 2021)
As we report above: Hopkins Jr. was later reinstated. Pete Strom was his legal counsel.
