A day-by-day diary of what happened when a disabled complainant asked the State Bar of Georgia to correct a dismissal it admitted was issued on a misfiled record, and asked whether the ADA applied to its own process. Every entry links to the actual emails and documents. January to June 2026. Six months, day by day.
Jump to a day
Chapter 1. The grievance and the two rebuttals.
Jan 23 · Jan 28 · Feb 2 · Feb 3 · Feb 20
Chapter 2. The dismissal and the admission.
Apr 10 · Apr 20 · Apr 21
Chapter 3. The ADA request.
Apr 30 · May 4 · May 5 · May 7 · May 11
Chapter 4. The denial and the shutdown.
May 12 · May 13 · May 14 · May 15
Chapter 5. The receipt fight.
May 18 · May 19 · May 20 · May 21 · May 22 · May 26 · May 27
Chapter 6. The pivot and the escalation.
May 29 · Jun 1 · Jun 2 · Jun 8 · Jun 10 · Jun 16 · Jun 17
Chapter 7. The end of the paper trail.
Jun 18 · Jun 26 · Jun 30
Chapter 1. The grievance and the two rebuttals
January 23 to February 20. I used the Bar’s process exactly as the Bar describes it.
January 23, 2026
I filed a grievance with the State Bar of Georgia against a City of Brookhaven contract attorney. I did it in writing, through the Bar’s own intake, the way the Bar tells the public to do it. I was not looking for a fight. I was using the one process Georgia offers when you believe a lawyer’s conduct crossed a line.
Read it: how the grievance began · Back to index
January 28, 2026
The Bar processed the grievance, assigned it a number, and routed it to the attorney to respond. So far, the machine worked. Intake, number, routing. Five days. Remember that speed. It does not come back.
Read it: how the grievance began · Back to index
February 2, 2026
The contract attorney sent his written response to the Bar. Under the Bar’s own published process, that is the moment the grievant can be invited to rebut. The next step was mine, and I took it the very next day.
Read it: how the grievance began · Back to index
February 3, 2026
I sent my first rebuttal, as the Bar’s process invited. The Bar’s system confirmed delivery. Hold on to that word, confirmed. This entire diary is about what a confirmation from this institution turns out to be worth.
Read it: how the grievance began · Back to index
February 20, 2026
I sent my second rebuttal, by the Bar’s deadline. It was delayed only because the City of Brookhaven withheld a public record I needed, and I had to obtain it another way. The Bar’s system confirmed delivery again. Two rebuttals. Two confirmations. Both in the Bar’s hands.
Then, for seven weeks, nothing.
Read it: how the grievance began · Back to index
Chapter 2. The dismissal and the admission
April 10 to April 21. Dismissed for a missing rebuttal. Eleven days later, the Bar admitted it had both.
April 10, 2026
The Bar dismissed the grievance, in a letter signed by Deputy General Counsel Andreea N. Morrison, stating no rebuttal had been received. Read that against Chapter 1. Two rebuttals, two delivery confirmations, and a dismissal that says neither one exists. The respondent’s name is blacked out in the letter as posted here.
Read it: the April 10 dismissal · Back to index
April 20, 2026
I sent the first two emails challenging the April 10 dismissal. I did not argue the merits. I asked the process question: how can a dismissal say no rebuttal was received when your own system confirmed two?
Read it: the first challenge · Back to index
April 21, 2026
The Bar responded for the first time, and the response is the most important document on this site. Assistant General Counsel Leigh Burgess admitted, in writing: “As a result of this misclassification, your submissions were not added to the grievance file at that time.” They had my rebuttals. Staff mislabeled them. They were not in the file when the dismissal went out. The file was not in the file.
Read it: the April 21 admission · Back to index
Chapter 3. The ADA request
April 30 to May 11. I asked for the minimum a disabled person needs to use a paper process. Running unanswered questions after April 30: five.
April 30, 2026
I sent a comprehensive ADA accommodation package and a companion conflict-screen demand. I write with voice software because of my hands, so what I asked for was basic: written communication, accessible formats, confirmation that documents reach the file, and one reliable person to send things to. I also asked the obvious structural question: when the complaint concerns the Bar’s own handling, who outside that office reviews it?
Read it: the accommodation package · Back to index
May 4, 2026
John J. Shiptenko sent the Bar’s first substantive ADA engagement and granted two accommodations, written communication and accessible electronic formats. An institution was administering disability access. Keep this day in mind. In eight days another lawyer in the same office will deny the law behind it applies at all.
Read it: the accommodations granted · Back to index
May 5, 2026
Leigh Burgess sent operational answers to the April 30 questions and confirmed the misclassification a second time. The admission was not a slip. It is in the record twice, from the same office, in writing.
Read it: the second confirmation · Back to index
May 7, 2026
Shiptenko sent a substantive point-by-point reply to my access concerns. Engagement, on paper. But the two questions that mattered, whether the April 10 dismissal would be corrected and what a receipt actually means, stayed open. Running count of unanswered questions after this week: eleven.
Read it: the point-by-point reply · Back to index
May 11, 2026
I sent two letters, a full response to Shiptenko’s May 4 and May 7 emails, and a final institutional cure demand to the General Counsel, both setting a single cure deadline. I told them plainly what would fix this: correct the record the Bar itself admitted was wrong. Unanswered questions after today: thirteen.
Read it: the cure demand · Back to index
Chapter 4. The denial and the shutdown
May 12 to May 15. Four days that changed what this record is about.
May 12, 2026
Deputy General Counsel William D. NeSmith III issued a written ADA coverage denial at 2:12 PM. It said the Bar is not a public entity and need not publish an ADA Coordinator. It questioned whether I needed help at all, pointing to my “detailed, articulate” writing, words produced by the voice software I use because of my hands. And it suggested my ADA request “may be directed less toward obtaining accommodation for a functional limitation and more toward securing a particular substantive outcome … or toward establishing a basis for further legal action against the State Bar.” The email was sent to me only, with every other recipient stripped off the thread.
Read it: the coverage denial · Back to index
May 13, 2026
A dense single day. A call was offered for 11:30, then withdrawn the next morning. Shiptenko wrote that the Bar had “approved your accommodation request.” So on May 12 the ADA did not apply to the Bar, and on May 13 the Bar was approving accommodations under it. Both positions are in writing, one day apart.
Read it: the dense day · Back to index
May 14, 2026
Cure-window day. The deadline I set for the Bar to correct its own admitted error came and went. I also notified the Bar that my surgery had been postponed because I could not clear preop. Shiptenko was copied. Remember that. The Bar will later build a delay narrative around a recovery timeline it was told, in writing, did not happen on schedule.
Read it: cure-window day · Back to index
May 15, 2026
I filed grievances against two Bar officials, Deputy General Counsel Morrison, who signed the April 10 dismissal, and Deputy General Counsel NeSmith, who wrote the May 12 denial, and sent notice emails. The same day, correspondence was shut down from the Bar’s side. Fifteen questions were now open. The number stops moving here, because the answers do.
Read it: the grievances filed · Back to index
Chapter 5. The receipt fight
May 18 to May 27. It took three written requests to learn whether one document reached one file. Unanswered questions: fifteen, and holding.
May 18, 2026
I sent Shiptenko a comprehensive ADA access and receipt-confirmation inquiry about the portal grievances, and a separate supplemental-evidence transmission to Grievance Counsel Adrienne Nash requesting receipt confirmation. After April 10, I do not treat receipt as a formality. This institution has already shown me a document can be received and still not exist.
Read it: the receipt inquiry · Back to index
May 19, 2026
I sent Shiptenko a stand-alone receipt and file-association confirmation request for the prior day’s transmission. One question. Did it arrive, and is it in the file.
Read it: the stand-alone request · Back to index
May 20, 2026
Shiptenko replied that he had received the prior transmission only “as a courtesy copy” and told me to contact Nash directly. The ADA contact for my matter, receiving my evidence, described himself as a courtesy recipient. The routing guesswork I had asked the Bar to eliminate was now the Bar’s answer.
Read it: the courtesy copy reply · Back to index
May 21, 2026
I sent a third request for receipt confirmation, labeled exactly that, THIRD REQUEST. Three written asks to confirm one document reached one file, at the agency that dismissed my grievance the last time a document did not reach a file.
Read it: the third request · Back to index
May 22, 2026
Nash confirmed the resent attachments were accessible and added to the file. It took four days and three requests, but this time the confirmation named the file. That is what I had been asking the Bar to do since April: say the words, it arrived and it is in the file.
Read it: the confirmation · Back to index
May 26, 2026
I sent Shiptenko a consolidated follow-up with fifteen open process and ADA access questions in one ledger. One document, numbered, so nothing could be lost, misclassified, or answered around. The same thread carried my report that the Bar’s own grievance form was a barrier, including a CAPTCHA my assistive technology could not reliably clear.
Read it: the fifteen-question ledger · Back to index
May 27, 2026
I reduced the coverage question to one word and sent Shiptenko a threshold yes or no request with a Friday deadline. Does Title II of the ADA apply to the State Bar of Georgia. Yes or no. After a month of moving positions, I asked for one syllable.
Read it: the yes or no demand · Back to index
Chapter 6. The pivot and the escalation
May 29 to June 17. The one-word answer never came. The audience got bigger.
May 29, 2026
Shiptenko answered the yes or no question with a litigating position rather than a yes or a no, writing that the Bar is “not subject to Title II” and pivoting to Title III. Count the positions now on the record: accommodations granted under the ADA, not a public entity, not subject to Title II, and now Title III. The question was one word. The answer was a moving target.
Read it: the non-answer · Back to index
June 1, 2026
I sent a follow-up reporting that a grievance I filed against a Bar official produced no confirmation at all, because I could not use the portal and the alternate route generated no receipt. The form was the barrier I had already reported, and the workaround was a black hole. A disabled complainant should not need luck to find out whether his filing exists.
Read it: the missing receipt · Back to index
June 2, 2026
Shiptenko replied confirming receipt of the grievance against a Bar official, narrowed my role on the thread to accommodation requests only, and announced he would be out of office. Receipt confirmed, scope shrunk, contact leaving. All in one email.
Read it: the narrowing · Back to index
June 8, 2026
I escalated to Human Resources, sending a misconduct, harassment, and retaliation ADA complaint against three OGC lawyers, NeSmith, Morrison, and Burgess, to the Director of Human Resources and eleven leadership and Board officers, with an immediate preservation demand. If the office handling the complaints is the subject of the complaints, the complaint has to go over the office.
Read it: the HR escalation · Back to index
June 10, 2026
Shiptenko sent a proactive status update on the reconsideration, stating the postponement ran to June 15 and expressing a hope about my surgery. A polite email built on a timeline the Bar had chosen and a recovery the Bar had been told, on May 14, in writing, with Shiptenko copied, did not happen on schedule.
Read it: the status update · Back to index
June 16, 2026
I waited until past the June 15 date the Bar itself had set, then sent a consolidated reconsideration reply with twenty-four written questions and exhibits to Shiptenko and the full leadership group. Same day, the twenty-four questions were routed to Nash and the leadership copy list was stripped from the reply. Every time the audience grew, someone at the Bar made it smaller.
Read it: the twenty-four questions · Back to index
June 17, 2026
I sent a final hybrid reply listing the outstanding ADA compliance issues and unanswered questions, contrasting the Spanish and English grievance forms and the Bar’s silence against other agencies’ timeliness. The same day, the Bar’s reply pointed to my “voice-to-text tool” as an available aid. The tool I bought. With my money. Years ago. The Bar’s ADA answer was, in the end, equipment I already owned. That evening I filed a grievance concerning the ADA Coordinator’s own handling, using the self-document route the Bar’s own June email had described.
Read it: the final hybrid reply · Back to index
Chapter 7. The end of the paper trail
June 18 to June 30. First and only answers: seven matters closed in one day. Of the fifteen questions, answered: zero.
June 18, 2026
At 8:05 AM, Shiptenko acknowledged the grievance filed against him with one word: “Received.” One word, sent to me alone, no one copied. After six months of asking this institution what received means, I finally got the answer in its purest form. It means one word, and nothing after it.
Read it: the one-word reply · Back to index
June 26, 2026
I sent a status demand on all seven open matters, none of which had a disposition, under a subject line that said what the record showed: forty-two days of silence. I restored the full leadership copy list the Bar kept shrinking, and attached the grievance for reference. The same day brought an out-of-office reply routing immediate matters to another staff member, so I forwarded the demand there and asked one question in writing: while the ADA contact is away, who owns my accommodations, and do the granted ones remain in effect.
Read it: the correspondence record · Back to index
June 30, 2026
The answers arrived, all of them, in one day. The reconsideration of the original grievance: denied, with the April 10 no-rebuttal statement still uncorrected. The Westbury grievance: dismissed, with the respondent, a former member of the Bar’s Board of Governors, copied on his own clearance. The Morrison grievance: dismissed. The NeSmith grievance: dismissed. The Shiptenko grievance: dismissed. Six months, fifteen written questions, seven matters, and the Bar’s complete output was one day of dismissal letters. Questions answered: zero. That is where the diary ends, because that is where the Bar ended it.
Read it: the June 30 dispositions · Back to index
Where to go next. Read the full story · See the documents · The open questions · The full timeline