EMAIL SENT · 2026-05-18
Read the text transcript
Dear Mr. Shiptenko:
I write regarding ADA access, human receipt confirmation, and conflict routing for the three grievances submitted through the Bar's portal on Friday, May 15, 2026.
This is not a request that you decide the merits of any grievance. It is an ADA access and process-confirmation request.
The three May 15 submissions were:
1. Grievance concerning James R. ████████, Jr.
2. Grievance concerning Andreea N. Morrison.
3. Grievance concerning William D. NeSmith III.
I need written answers because the Bar's autoresponder is identical for all three submissions. Each produced the same generic message:
"The State Bar of Georgia is in receipt of your grievance submitted via our online portal. Your grievance will be placed in line for review."
That message does not identify which grievance was received, does not provide a complaint number or tracking number, does not confirm what attachments were received, does not confirm the submission is complete, and does not distinguish between a grievance against an outside lawyer and a grievance against a Bar staff member. Two of the three May 15 grievances concern individuals who work inside the Bar's own Office of General Counsel. The autoresponder treats all three the same — no conflict acknowledgment, no different routing notice, no indication that the grievance has been separated from the person it concerns. The Bar's own written admission states:
"As a result of this misclassification, your submissions were not added to the grievance file at that time."
That admission is the institutional reason this inquiry exists. It is also the institutional reason autoresponder receipt is no longer sufficient documentation for any submission concerning my matter.
There is also an inconsistency about the Bar's own intake email address. The █████████████ address appears in some Bar correspondence and public materials as a submission route, but Ms. Burgess confirmed on May 5 that submissions sent to that address were not properly placed in the grievance file. The Bar has not clarified whether █████████████ is a valid submission address, an unreliable address, or a deprecated address. Complainants are left guessing which email address actually reaches the intake system and which one loses their filing. Please confirm whether █████████████ is a current, monitored, and reliable submission address for grievance-related correspondence, or whether complainants should use a different address and if so, which one.
Please confirm, in writing, for each May 15 submission:
1. that the Bar received it;
2. the date and time it was received;
3. the complaint number, tracking number, or internal reference number assigned;
4. whether it is marked received and complete;
5. whether any attachment, signature, verification, identity field, required form field, or other required component is missing;
6. whether it has been rejected, held, duplicated, merged, reclassified, reassigned, or routed somewhere other than the intended grievance queue;
7. whether any additional cure step is required from me;
8. who is responsible for confirming intake completeness;
9. what email address I should use for written ADA access issues involving these submissions.
Please do not treat an automated portal confirmation or generic email acknowledgment as a complete answer. I am specifically requesting human confirmation that each complaint is in the correct system, marked received, marked complete, and routed under the correct policy.
I also need written clarification about the Bar's ADA access procedure.
My experiences with the Bar's public grievance-intake pathway identified a basic access problem. The active digital grievance pathway did not provide a visible ADA accommodation route, disability-access contact, alternative written filing path, or non-CAPTCHA filing option for disabled members of the public. The older paper/PDF route appears to have included only phone-based ADA contact information, which is not an effective substitute for a written-access route for me.
I am not asking you to accept my audit as the Bar's position. I am asking the Bar to identify the official current procedure.
Please confirm whether the State Bar has a published ADA grievance procedure for complaints about access to the Bar's own programs, services, activities, intake systems, grievance process, portals, forms, communications, or staff handling.
If such a procedure exists, please identify:
1. where it is published;
2. who receives ADA complaints about the Bar's own process;
3. what email address or portal should be used;
4. whether the complaint is handled separately from attorney-discipline grievances;
5. whether written-only communication is available;
6. whether there is a non-CAPTCHA route for disabled users who cannot reliably complete the portal.
If no published ADA grievance procedure exists for complaints about the Bar's own accessibility, please state that clearly.
If the Bar uses an unpublished, internal, or staff-managed process, please identify that process in writing. If the Bar's position is that ADA complaints about the Bar's own grievance system must be submitted through the same formal attorney-grievance portal used to complain about lawyers, please say so and explain how the Bar prevents those ADA complaints from being misclassified as attorney-discipline complaints, merits submissions, or ordinary grievance correspondence.
The submission process itself created an access barrier.
The May 15 grievances were submitted with assistance because I could not reliably complete the process independently. I use voice-to-text and assistive technology because of documented functional limitations affecting my hands, stamina, cognition, and written communication. The Bar's portal required manual steps, CAPTCHA completion, upload handling, and other actions that I could not reliably perform alone.
The CAPTCHA sytem you employ is not a minor inconvenience. It is a filing barrier. The Bar's submission architecture requires manual completion of a step I cannot reliably perform under my documented disability and assistive-technology use. That makes the architecture inaccessible for me and creates foreseeable barriers for other disabled members of the public, unless an alternative route is identified.
At least one of the May 15 grievances would have been filed earlier, but I could not complete the CAPTCHA and related portal steps without assistance.
I have preserved a contemporaneous screenshot of the portal's current submission-completion architecture, which displays only generic "Thank you. Your Grievance has been received" language without grievance number, tracking identifier, or human-confirmation mechanism. That screenshot is available on written request.
The assistance I received was access and technology assistance. It was needed to complete the mechanics of filing, including navigating the portal, handling CAPTCHA, uploading attachments, and completing manual steps. It was not a request for someone else to assert claims for me, and it was not a substitute for the Bar providing an accessible route.
Please confirm whether the Bar has an ADA-accessible alternative to the CAPTCHA-based portal, including a written email route, direct upload route, staff-assisted written filing route, or other non-phone method. I need this in writing because telephone-only access is not an effective accommodation for me.
I am also asking the Bar to treat this as a process-improvement issue, not merely as a case-specific exception. A disabled complainant should not have to guess how to request access, fight through CAPTCHA, rely on an autoresponder, and then later prove that the submission was actually received, complete, and placed in the correct queue.
Please also confirm whether the Bar will identify or provide:
1. a non-CAPTCHA filing route for disabled complainants;
2. a written ADA-access email address for grievance-intake barriers;
3. a staff-assisted written filing process;
4. a direct upload or email-submission alternative when the portal is inaccessible;
5. human confirmation that submissions are received, complete, and correctly routed;
6. a tracking number or complaint number for each submission;
7. written notice of any missing items or cure steps;
8. a published ADA procedure for complaints about the Bar's own intake system.
I also need clarification about the Spanish grievance materials and current English intake materials.
The Bar's own Spanish grievance form (Rev. 7/14/2020) states verbatim at the bottom of the complaint form:
"SI USTED TIENE UNA INCAPACIDAD Y NECESITA ASISTENCIA EN EL PROCESO DE LA QUEJA, FAVOR DE CONTACTAR LA ADA COORDINADORA AL (404) 527-8720 O (800) 334-6865."
That translates to: "If you have a disability and need assistance in the complaint process, please contact the ADA Coordinator at (404) 527-8720 or (800) 334-6865."
For comparison, the current English grievance form (Rev. 2024) contains no equivalent ADA-assistance language. No ADA Coordinator contact. No disability-help notice. No alternative filing route for disabled complainants. The English portal contains the same omission.
I have not seen this ADA Coordinator contact information advertised anywhere else — not on the Bar's website, not on the English grievance portal, not in any correspondence I have received from the Bar, and not in any accommodation-related communication from Mr. Shiptenko, Ms. Nash, Mr. NeSmith, or any other Bar staff member. If this contact existed and was available, why was it not offered to me at any point during my documented requests for ADA accommodation? Why is it published only on the Spanish form?
Please identify who currently holds the ADA Coordinator role referenced in the Spanish form, whether that person is still available at those numbers, and why no equivalent notice appears in the English digital filing pathway, the English paper form, or in any written communication to disabled complainants.
I raise these inconsistencies not to be difficult but because they make working with the Bar's grievance system extremely difficult and unnecessarily so. A disabled complainant should not have to discover the Bar's ADA contact information by reading a Spanish-language form that was never provided to them.
Many of these issues are not complicated to fix. Adding an ADA contact line to the English form, publishing a non-CAPTCHA filing route, providing a complaint tracking number in the autoresponder, and identifying file-upload limitations on the portal are basic operational tasks — not major infrastructure projects. The Bar's Annual Meeting at the Omni Amelia Island Resort on June 11-14 reflects an institution with resources. The meeting's own registration materials provide ADA accommodations for paying guests who attend the conference. A disabled member of the public who wants to file a free complaint does not receive the same consideration. What the Bar's own documents advertise and what the Bar's operational architecture provides are not the same thing.
To be clear: the inconsistencies are the issue. Not any single one of them the pattern of them. The Spanish form has ADA language the English form does not. The autoresponder provides no tracking number. The portal has no published file limitations. The CAPTCHA has no alternative. The OGC email address may or may not work. The ADA Coordinator may or may not exist. The conflict-routing policy may or may not be published. A disabled complainant should not have to reconstruct what the institution's own process failed to handle. The corrective burden belongs to the Bar.
These are not unreasonable asks. They are the minimum a public-facing intake system should provide. The DOJ's final rule on web accessibility for state and local government entities under Title II was published on April 24, 2024, requiring WCAG 2.1 Level AA compliance. The original compliance deadline for entities with populations over 50,000 was April 24, 2026 — recently extended to April 26, 2027. The Bar has had notice of this requirement for over a year. The current state of the portal and the absence of basic ADA infrastructure suggest that preparation did not occur.
I also need to raise concerns about the portal's upload system. The portal accepts sensitive grievance documents including personally identifiable information, case details, and confidential complaint materials — through a file-upload mechanism that provides no published information about file size limits, accepted file types, maximum number of uploads, or upload-error handling. There is no way to submit video evidence through the portal. In a case like mine, where █████████-camera recordings are central to the complaint, that is a significant limitation — and nowhere does the portal explain how a complainant is supposed to provide video evidence, whether a link is acceptable, or whether the Bar will request recordings directly from law enforcement.
Please confirm whether the Bar's portal upload system transmits and stores uploaded documents using encryption, whether uploaded files are transmitted over a secure connection, how uploaded grievance documents are stored after submission, who has access to uploaded files, whether the Bar has conducted a security assessment of the portal's file-upload architecture, what the file size and file type restrictions are, and how a complainant is expected to submit video evidence that the portal cannot accept. Complainants submitting sensitive materials through this system are entitled to know whether it meets basic data-security standards and what its actual capabilities are.
The issue is not language preference. The issue is procedural notice. If the Bar has or had a Spanish grievance packet that explains the grievance process, rebuttal opportunity, investigation sequence, communication expectations, and operational filing rules more clearly than the current English portal or current English form, then the Bar should identify which version is current and which procedural notices govern public complainants today.
Please confirm:
1. whether the Spanish grievance packet is current, legacy, or withdrawn;
2. whether the current English portal provides the same procedural guidance;
3. whether the current English form or portal explains rebuttal submission, file placement, review sequence, and complainant communication expectations;
4. whether any disability-assistance notice, ADA-help language, or procedural guidance was removed, omitted, translated differently, or not carried forward into the active English portal pathway;
5. where a disabled English-speaking complainant is supposed to find the same procedural guidance before filing.
There is also a conflict-routing issue. I was unable to find online a procedure for how grievances are handled when a conflict exists and how to document it at time of submission so as not to produce an issue with review of the complaint.
Two of the May 15 grievances concern individuals copied on this email. I am not asking those individuals to decide or route grievances concerning themselves. I am asking the Bar to identify the written policy that governs how such grievances are conflict-screened, routed, reviewed, and walled off from persons whose conduct may be at issue.
The separation between respondent and reviewer is a Bar institutional obligation. It does not depend on a complainant requesting it. Without written confirmation, I cannot verify how that wall is maintained.
This inquiry is an ADA access and process-confirmation request. It is not litigation, a litigation threat, or correspondence requiring counsel intermediation. I ask the Bar not to treat this inquiry, or any portion of it, as a basis for further channel restriction.
Please confirm, in writing:
1. whether either the Morrison grievance or NeSmith grievance has been accessed, reviewed, routed, classified, assigned, or discussed by the person who is the subject of that grievance;
2. whether any person named, implicated, or reasonably likely to be a witness will be excluded from intake, classification, assignment, review, reconsideration, ADA handling, and internal communications concerning that grievance;
3. who performed or will perform the conflict screen for each May 15 grievance;
4. what written policy, rule, procedure, or internal protocol governs grievances against Bar OGC lawyers, Bar staff, Bar officers, Bar leadership, former Bar leadership, or persons with prior Bar disciplinary-system involvement;
5. whether complaints involving Bar personnel are handled by the same OGC intake system used for ordinary attorney grievances, or by a separate reviewer, outside reviewer, special master, committee, Supreme Court referral route, or other conflict-free mechanism;
6. whether the complainant receives written notice when a complaint is routed away from ordinary OGC handling because of a conflict;
7. whether the person complained against receives notice at intake, after screening, only after assignment, or under another rule;
8. whether any respondent-side notice has already been sent on any of the three May 15 grievances;
9. whether any of the May 15 grievances has been rejected, reclassified, duplicated, merged, held, reassigned, or routed outside the ordinary grievance queue;
10. whether ADA access complaints about the Bar's own process are handled separately from attorney-discipline complaints, or whether the Bar requires those complaints to be filed through the same grievance system used to complain about lawyers.
Please also identify whether the Bar has a written policy distinguishing among:
1. ordinary grievances against Georgia lawyers;
2. grievances against lawyers who are current or former Bar officials, Bar committee members, Bar staff, Bar defense counsel, or otherwise connected to the Bar's disciplinary system;
3. complaints against Bar OGC lawyers or staff;
4. ADA access complaints about the Bar's own grievance process;
5. requests for accommodation inside a pending grievance or reconsideration.
If no such written policy exists, please state that clearly.
For clarity, I am requesting:
1. confirmation whether a published ADA grievance procedure exists for complaints about the Bar's own accessibility;
2. confirmation whether ADA complaints about the Bar's process may be filed separately from formal attorney grievances;
3. identification of a non-CAPTCHA filing route for disabled complainants.
4. human confirmation that the three May 15 submissions were received and marked complete.
5. identification of any missing items or cure steps for each submission.
6. written conflict-routing confirmation for the Morrison and NeSmith grievances.
7. identification of the written policy governing grievances against Bar staff, Bar OGC lawyers, and persons connected to the Bar's disciplinary system.
8. clarification of the Spanish grievance packet / current English form discrepancy.
9. confirmation that written-only communication remains available and will be honored.
Please respond in writing within five business days of receipt. These requests do not require a merits investigation. They require institutional confirmation of facts, procedures, and routing information already within the Bar's possession that should have predetermined answers available upon request.
If any portion requires additional time, please provide the information that can be confirmed now, identify what specifically remains under review, and provide a written completion date for the remaining items.
Please do not call me or require a telephone call to clarify this request. If another Bar official is responsible for any part of this request, please forward it internally without requiring me to resend it into another mailbox or portal.
I am not re-filing the May 15 grievances through this email. I am asking the Bar to confirm that the grievances already submitted through the portal were received, are complete, and are being handled through the correct access and conflict-screening process.
Respectfully,
██████ ███████
██████████████
██████████████, █████████████
██████████████
██████████████
Qualified individual with a disability; SSA-determined disabled- Supporting documentation is available upon written request and execution of a properly limited HIPAA-compliant authorization.
Accessibility notice: Due to my documented disability, including limited or no functional use of my dominant hand, I use assistive technology and voice-to-text tools to produce written communications. I sincerely appreciate your understanding of this accommodation. If any portion of this correspondence contains a typographical error or is unclear as a result, please do not hesitate to ask and I will gladly clarify. Thank you for your patience and understanding.
I write regarding ADA access, human receipt confirmation, and conflict routing for the three grievances submitted through the Bar's portal on Friday, May 15, 2026.
This is not a request that you decide the merits of any grievance. It is an ADA access and process-confirmation request.
The three May 15 submissions were:
1. Grievance concerning James R. ████████, Jr.
2. Grievance concerning Andreea N. Morrison.
3. Grievance concerning William D. NeSmith III.
I need written answers because the Bar's autoresponder is identical for all three submissions. Each produced the same generic message:
"The State Bar of Georgia is in receipt of your grievance submitted via our online portal. Your grievance will be placed in line for review."
That message does not identify which grievance was received, does not provide a complaint number or tracking number, does not confirm what attachments were received, does not confirm the submission is complete, and does not distinguish between a grievance against an outside lawyer and a grievance against a Bar staff member. Two of the three May 15 grievances concern individuals who work inside the Bar's own Office of General Counsel. The autoresponder treats all three the same — no conflict acknowledgment, no different routing notice, no indication that the grievance has been separated from the person it concerns. The Bar's own written admission states:
"As a result of this misclassification, your submissions were not added to the grievance file at that time."
That admission is the institutional reason this inquiry exists. It is also the institutional reason autoresponder receipt is no longer sufficient documentation for any submission concerning my matter.
There is also an inconsistency about the Bar's own intake email address. The █████████████ address appears in some Bar correspondence and public materials as a submission route, but Ms. Burgess confirmed on May 5 that submissions sent to that address were not properly placed in the grievance file. The Bar has not clarified whether █████████████ is a valid submission address, an unreliable address, or a deprecated address. Complainants are left guessing which email address actually reaches the intake system and which one loses their filing. Please confirm whether █████████████ is a current, monitored, and reliable submission address for grievance-related correspondence, or whether complainants should use a different address and if so, which one.
Please confirm, in writing, for each May 15 submission:
1. that the Bar received it;
2. the date and time it was received;
3. the complaint number, tracking number, or internal reference number assigned;
4. whether it is marked received and complete;
5. whether any attachment, signature, verification, identity field, required form field, or other required component is missing;
6. whether it has been rejected, held, duplicated, merged, reclassified, reassigned, or routed somewhere other than the intended grievance queue;
7. whether any additional cure step is required from me;
8. who is responsible for confirming intake completeness;
9. what email address I should use for written ADA access issues involving these submissions.
Please do not treat an automated portal confirmation or generic email acknowledgment as a complete answer. I am specifically requesting human confirmation that each complaint is in the correct system, marked received, marked complete, and routed under the correct policy.
I also need written clarification about the Bar's ADA access procedure.
My experiences with the Bar's public grievance-intake pathway identified a basic access problem. The active digital grievance pathway did not provide a visible ADA accommodation route, disability-access contact, alternative written filing path, or non-CAPTCHA filing option for disabled members of the public. The older paper/PDF route appears to have included only phone-based ADA contact information, which is not an effective substitute for a written-access route for me.
I am not asking you to accept my audit as the Bar's position. I am asking the Bar to identify the official current procedure.
Please confirm whether the State Bar has a published ADA grievance procedure for complaints about access to the Bar's own programs, services, activities, intake systems, grievance process, portals, forms, communications, or staff handling.
If such a procedure exists, please identify:
1. where it is published;
2. who receives ADA complaints about the Bar's own process;
3. what email address or portal should be used;
4. whether the complaint is handled separately from attorney-discipline grievances;
5. whether written-only communication is available;
6. whether there is a non-CAPTCHA route for disabled users who cannot reliably complete the portal.
If no published ADA grievance procedure exists for complaints about the Bar's own accessibility, please state that clearly.
If the Bar uses an unpublished, internal, or staff-managed process, please identify that process in writing. If the Bar's position is that ADA complaints about the Bar's own grievance system must be submitted through the same formal attorney-grievance portal used to complain about lawyers, please say so and explain how the Bar prevents those ADA complaints from being misclassified as attorney-discipline complaints, merits submissions, or ordinary grievance correspondence.
The submission process itself created an access barrier.
The May 15 grievances were submitted with assistance because I could not reliably complete the process independently. I use voice-to-text and assistive technology because of documented functional limitations affecting my hands, stamina, cognition, and written communication. The Bar's portal required manual steps, CAPTCHA completion, upload handling, and other actions that I could not reliably perform alone.
The CAPTCHA sytem you employ is not a minor inconvenience. It is a filing barrier. The Bar's submission architecture requires manual completion of a step I cannot reliably perform under my documented disability and assistive-technology use. That makes the architecture inaccessible for me and creates foreseeable barriers for other disabled members of the public, unless an alternative route is identified.
At least one of the May 15 grievances would have been filed earlier, but I could not complete the CAPTCHA and related portal steps without assistance.
I have preserved a contemporaneous screenshot of the portal's current submission-completion architecture, which displays only generic "Thank you. Your Grievance has been received" language without grievance number, tracking identifier, or human-confirmation mechanism. That screenshot is available on written request.
The assistance I received was access and technology assistance. It was needed to complete the mechanics of filing, including navigating the portal, handling CAPTCHA, uploading attachments, and completing manual steps. It was not a request for someone else to assert claims for me, and it was not a substitute for the Bar providing an accessible route.
Please confirm whether the Bar has an ADA-accessible alternative to the CAPTCHA-based portal, including a written email route, direct upload route, staff-assisted written filing route, or other non-phone method. I need this in writing because telephone-only access is not an effective accommodation for me.
I am also asking the Bar to treat this as a process-improvement issue, not merely as a case-specific exception. A disabled complainant should not have to guess how to request access, fight through CAPTCHA, rely on an autoresponder, and then later prove that the submission was actually received, complete, and placed in the correct queue.
Please also confirm whether the Bar will identify or provide:
1. a non-CAPTCHA filing route for disabled complainants;
2. a written ADA-access email address for grievance-intake barriers;
3. a staff-assisted written filing process;
4. a direct upload or email-submission alternative when the portal is inaccessible;
5. human confirmation that submissions are received, complete, and correctly routed;
6. a tracking number or complaint number for each submission;
7. written notice of any missing items or cure steps;
8. a published ADA procedure for complaints about the Bar's own intake system.
I also need clarification about the Spanish grievance materials and current English intake materials.
The Bar's own Spanish grievance form (Rev. 7/14/2020) states verbatim at the bottom of the complaint form:
"SI USTED TIENE UNA INCAPACIDAD Y NECESITA ASISTENCIA EN EL PROCESO DE LA QUEJA, FAVOR DE CONTACTAR LA ADA COORDINADORA AL (404) 527-8720 O (800) 334-6865."
That translates to: "If you have a disability and need assistance in the complaint process, please contact the ADA Coordinator at (404) 527-8720 or (800) 334-6865."
For comparison, the current English grievance form (Rev. 2024) contains no equivalent ADA-assistance language. No ADA Coordinator contact. No disability-help notice. No alternative filing route for disabled complainants. The English portal contains the same omission.
I have not seen this ADA Coordinator contact information advertised anywhere else — not on the Bar's website, not on the English grievance portal, not in any correspondence I have received from the Bar, and not in any accommodation-related communication from Mr. Shiptenko, Ms. Nash, Mr. NeSmith, or any other Bar staff member. If this contact existed and was available, why was it not offered to me at any point during my documented requests for ADA accommodation? Why is it published only on the Spanish form?
Please identify who currently holds the ADA Coordinator role referenced in the Spanish form, whether that person is still available at those numbers, and why no equivalent notice appears in the English digital filing pathway, the English paper form, or in any written communication to disabled complainants.
I raise these inconsistencies not to be difficult but because they make working with the Bar's grievance system extremely difficult and unnecessarily so. A disabled complainant should not have to discover the Bar's ADA contact information by reading a Spanish-language form that was never provided to them.
Many of these issues are not complicated to fix. Adding an ADA contact line to the English form, publishing a non-CAPTCHA filing route, providing a complaint tracking number in the autoresponder, and identifying file-upload limitations on the portal are basic operational tasks — not major infrastructure projects. The Bar's Annual Meeting at the Omni Amelia Island Resort on June 11-14 reflects an institution with resources. The meeting's own registration materials provide ADA accommodations for paying guests who attend the conference. A disabled member of the public who wants to file a free complaint does not receive the same consideration. What the Bar's own documents advertise and what the Bar's operational architecture provides are not the same thing.
To be clear: the inconsistencies are the issue. Not any single one of them the pattern of them. The Spanish form has ADA language the English form does not. The autoresponder provides no tracking number. The portal has no published file limitations. The CAPTCHA has no alternative. The OGC email address may or may not work. The ADA Coordinator may or may not exist. The conflict-routing policy may or may not be published. A disabled complainant should not have to reconstruct what the institution's own process failed to handle. The corrective burden belongs to the Bar.
These are not unreasonable asks. They are the minimum a public-facing intake system should provide. The DOJ's final rule on web accessibility for state and local government entities under Title II was published on April 24, 2024, requiring WCAG 2.1 Level AA compliance. The original compliance deadline for entities with populations over 50,000 was April 24, 2026 — recently extended to April 26, 2027. The Bar has had notice of this requirement for over a year. The current state of the portal and the absence of basic ADA infrastructure suggest that preparation did not occur.
I also need to raise concerns about the portal's upload system. The portal accepts sensitive grievance documents including personally identifiable information, case details, and confidential complaint materials — through a file-upload mechanism that provides no published information about file size limits, accepted file types, maximum number of uploads, or upload-error handling. There is no way to submit video evidence through the portal. In a case like mine, where █████████-camera recordings are central to the complaint, that is a significant limitation — and nowhere does the portal explain how a complainant is supposed to provide video evidence, whether a link is acceptable, or whether the Bar will request recordings directly from law enforcement.
Please confirm whether the Bar's portal upload system transmits and stores uploaded documents using encryption, whether uploaded files are transmitted over a secure connection, how uploaded grievance documents are stored after submission, who has access to uploaded files, whether the Bar has conducted a security assessment of the portal's file-upload architecture, what the file size and file type restrictions are, and how a complainant is expected to submit video evidence that the portal cannot accept. Complainants submitting sensitive materials through this system are entitled to know whether it meets basic data-security standards and what its actual capabilities are.
The issue is not language preference. The issue is procedural notice. If the Bar has or had a Spanish grievance packet that explains the grievance process, rebuttal opportunity, investigation sequence, communication expectations, and operational filing rules more clearly than the current English portal or current English form, then the Bar should identify which version is current and which procedural notices govern public complainants today.
Please confirm:
1. whether the Spanish grievance packet is current, legacy, or withdrawn;
2. whether the current English portal provides the same procedural guidance;
3. whether the current English form or portal explains rebuttal submission, file placement, review sequence, and complainant communication expectations;
4. whether any disability-assistance notice, ADA-help language, or procedural guidance was removed, omitted, translated differently, or not carried forward into the active English portal pathway;
5. where a disabled English-speaking complainant is supposed to find the same procedural guidance before filing.
There is also a conflict-routing issue. I was unable to find online a procedure for how grievances are handled when a conflict exists and how to document it at time of submission so as not to produce an issue with review of the complaint.
Two of the May 15 grievances concern individuals copied on this email. I am not asking those individuals to decide or route grievances concerning themselves. I am asking the Bar to identify the written policy that governs how such grievances are conflict-screened, routed, reviewed, and walled off from persons whose conduct may be at issue.
The separation between respondent and reviewer is a Bar institutional obligation. It does not depend on a complainant requesting it. Without written confirmation, I cannot verify how that wall is maintained.
This inquiry is an ADA access and process-confirmation request. It is not litigation, a litigation threat, or correspondence requiring counsel intermediation. I ask the Bar not to treat this inquiry, or any portion of it, as a basis for further channel restriction.
Please confirm, in writing:
1. whether either the Morrison grievance or NeSmith grievance has been accessed, reviewed, routed, classified, assigned, or discussed by the person who is the subject of that grievance;
2. whether any person named, implicated, or reasonably likely to be a witness will be excluded from intake, classification, assignment, review, reconsideration, ADA handling, and internal communications concerning that grievance;
3. who performed or will perform the conflict screen for each May 15 grievance;
4. what written policy, rule, procedure, or internal protocol governs grievances against Bar OGC lawyers, Bar staff, Bar officers, Bar leadership, former Bar leadership, or persons with prior Bar disciplinary-system involvement;
5. whether complaints involving Bar personnel are handled by the same OGC intake system used for ordinary attorney grievances, or by a separate reviewer, outside reviewer, special master, committee, Supreme Court referral route, or other conflict-free mechanism;
6. whether the complainant receives written notice when a complaint is routed away from ordinary OGC handling because of a conflict;
7. whether the person complained against receives notice at intake, after screening, only after assignment, or under another rule;
8. whether any respondent-side notice has already been sent on any of the three May 15 grievances;
9. whether any of the May 15 grievances has been rejected, reclassified, duplicated, merged, held, reassigned, or routed outside the ordinary grievance queue;
10. whether ADA access complaints about the Bar's own process are handled separately from attorney-discipline complaints, or whether the Bar requires those complaints to be filed through the same grievance system used to complain about lawyers.
Please also identify whether the Bar has a written policy distinguishing among:
1. ordinary grievances against Georgia lawyers;
2. grievances against lawyers who are current or former Bar officials, Bar committee members, Bar staff, Bar defense counsel, or otherwise connected to the Bar's disciplinary system;
3. complaints against Bar OGC lawyers or staff;
4. ADA access complaints about the Bar's own grievance process;
5. requests for accommodation inside a pending grievance or reconsideration.
If no such written policy exists, please state that clearly.
For clarity, I am requesting:
1. confirmation whether a published ADA grievance procedure exists for complaints about the Bar's own accessibility;
2. confirmation whether ADA complaints about the Bar's process may be filed separately from formal attorney grievances;
3. identification of a non-CAPTCHA filing route for disabled complainants.
4. human confirmation that the three May 15 submissions were received and marked complete.
5. identification of any missing items or cure steps for each submission.
6. written conflict-routing confirmation for the Morrison and NeSmith grievances.
7. identification of the written policy governing grievances against Bar staff, Bar OGC lawyers, and persons connected to the Bar's disciplinary system.
8. clarification of the Spanish grievance packet / current English form discrepancy.
9. confirmation that written-only communication remains available and will be honored.
Please respond in writing within five business days of receipt. These requests do not require a merits investigation. They require institutional confirmation of facts, procedures, and routing information already within the Bar's possession that should have predetermined answers available upon request.
If any portion requires additional time, please provide the information that can be confirmed now, identify what specifically remains under review, and provide a written completion date for the remaining items.
Please do not call me or require a telephone call to clarify this request. If another Bar official is responsible for any part of this request, please forward it internally without requiring me to resend it into another mailbox or portal.
I am not re-filing the May 15 grievances through this email. I am asking the Bar to confirm that the grievances already submitted through the portal were received, are complete, and are being handled through the correct access and conflict-screening process.
Respectfully,
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Qualified individual with a disability; SSA-determined disabled- Supporting documentation is available upon written request and execution of a properly limited HIPAA-compliant authorization.
Accessibility notice: Due to my documented disability, including limited or no functional use of my dominant hand, I use assistive technology and voice-to-text tools to produce written communications. I sincerely appreciate your understanding of this accommodation. If any portion of this correspondence contains a typographical error or is unclear as a result, please do not hesitate to ask and I will gladly clarify. Thank you for your patience and understanding.