I Asked Georgia Bar Disciplinary Board Chair Jeffrey W. DeLoach How He Dismissed Four Grievances Against the Bar’s Own Lawyers

From: the complainant
Subject: Your June 30, 2026 Dismissals of Four Grievances Concerning Office of the General Counsel Lawyers
Attachments: 1 PDF.

Mr. DeLoach:

On June 30, 2026, you signed four dismissal letters concerning grievances I submitted against lawyers employed in the Office of the General Counsel: ███████-Morrison 1, ███████-NeSmith 1, ███████-Burgess 1, and ███████-Shiptenko 1.

Those four grievances against the Bar’s own lawyers were decided through a different system, and without the stated threshold applied to the grievances I filed against lawyers outside the Office that were decided the same afternoon. The outside matters show a stated standard and written reasons, and the ███████ matter shows a respondent response and an invitation to rebut. Your four letters show a different route, state no standard, and show no respondent response or rebuttal step. I regard that as a serious breach of trust in the process.

Rule 4-201 states:

“The powers to investigate and discipline lawyers for violations of the Georgia Rules of Professional Conduct are hereby vested in the State Disciplinary Board.”

That authority reaches all Georgia lawyers, including prosecutors and solicitors. The two grievances I filed against lawyers outside the Office were decided by the Office of the General Counsel under its screening process. The four grievances I filed against lawyers employed in that Office were decided by the Chair of the State Disciplinary Board.

On September 14, I directed separate institutional questions to the General Counsel and Executive Director concerning the authority and process by which grievances against OGC lawyers were routed outside OGC. I intentionally did not copy you because part of that request concerns the institutional authority for that routing.

This letter is narrower. It asks what you personally received, what authority and standard you understood yourself to be applying, what opportunity you understood I had to participate while you were reviewing the matters, and what occurred before you signed the four dismissals.

Routing grievances concerning OGC lawyers to someone outside OGC was a sound step to address the conflict inherent in asking an office to screen grievances against its own lawyers. My concern is that the process used after that routing was not the same process reflected in grievances against lawyers outside the Office.

I. FACTS DRAWN FROM THE STATE BAR’S OWN RECORD

1. On May 4, the State Bar expressly tied disability accommodation to effective participation in the grievance process.

Mr. Shiptenko wrote:

“Please notify me directly of any disability-related accommodations you may need to effectively participate in the grievance against Attorney ███████ and the reconsideration. The State Bar wants to ensure that you have the same rights and opportunities as non-disabled grievants.”

2. On May 4, OGC granted written communication as my accommodation.

OGC wrote:

“The OGC is granting the following ADA accommodations requested by you: Written-only accommodation. All OGC communications with you regarding this matter will be in writing because of your disability-related communication limitations.”

3. On May 13, the State Bar used that accommodation process in determining when a disciplinary decision would issue.

Mr. Shiptenko wrote:

“The State Bar has approved your accommodation request. Ms. Adrienne Nash, who is handling your reconsideration in the Attorney ███████ matter, will postpone issuing her final determination.”

The State Bar therefore had already connected written accommodation with my ability to participate in its grievance and reconsideration processes.

4. Before your review, the State Bar had admitted that timely material had failed to reach a grievance file.

On April 21, Ms. Burgess wrote:

“As a result of this misclassification, your submissions were not added to the grievance file at that time. Accordingly, when Ms. Morrison reviewed the file, no rebuttal was present.”

The Morrison grievance you later dismissed concerned that admitted file failure and what followed it.

5. On May 15, the State Bar restricted substantive written communication.

Mr. NeSmith wrote:

“the State Bar of Georgia will not engage in further substantive correspondence with you concerning your threatened claims or the allegations set forth in your recent communications outside formal legal process.”

6. On May 19 and June 2, the State Bar told me how the grievances would be routed and limited what I could ask.

On May 19, Response@gabar.org wrote that the ████████ grievance “will be considered by OGC”, and that the Morrison and NeSmith grievances “will be considered by a member of the State Disciplinary Board”. The same notice offered a mailbox for a withdrawal or a “Request to supplement”, and stated:

“No request for information as to status, procedures, or other matters beyond a withdrawal or request to supplement will be processed on any correspondence sent to that email address or any other State Bar personnel except as noted herein.”

It also stated:

“Should the reviewer need additional information from you prior to completing the review, the reviewer will request it from you in writing.”

On June 2, the ADA contact further limited the purpose for which I could write to him.

Mr. Shiptenko wrote:

“correspondence to me regarding the grievance process should only be used to submit requests for accommodations under the ADA.”

In that same communication, after stating that the General Counsel had asked him to convey the information, he wrote:

“Your submitted grievance will be reviewed by a member of the State Disciplinary Board.”

No member was identified.

I was not told that the reviewer would be you.

I was not given your email address or another written route through which I could communicate with the person reviewing the grievance.

7. On June 30, you signed four dismissal letters.

For Morrison, you stated that you reviewed a six page narrative and related correspondence.

For NeSmith, you stated that you reviewed a seven page narrative and twenty four pages of exhibits.

For Burgess, you stated that you reviewed a fourteen page narrative and fourteen pages of exhibits.

For Shiptenko, you stated that you reviewed an eight page narrative and seven pages of exhibits.

Each letter then used substantially the same operative language. In ███████-Morrison 1, you wrote:

“Based upon a review of this record, I find no basis for this grievance to be forwarded to the State Bar Disciplinary Board for investigation of violations of Rules 8.4(a)(4) and (a)(5), or any other Georgia Rule of Professional Conduct. As a result, this grievance is dismissed.”

The other three letters use the same formulation with the applicable Rules changed.

None of the four letters states whether the standard applied was the Board standard in Rule 4-203(2), the OGC screening standard in Rule 4-202(e), or some other standard.

None states whether additional information was requested from me.

None states whether a respondent supplied information.

None identifies another Board member or a staff investigator.

8. All four decisions were transmitted through OGC from an address that did not permit a reply.

The four letters were emailed from “Dismissal” <OGCNoReply@gabar.org>.

Each copied the OGC lawyer who was the respondent in that grievance.

Each letter printed a postal address with the words “Reply to:”. The decisions were delivered by email, from an address that did not receive replies, and no email address or other written electronic route to you was provided with them. The accommodation OGC granted on May 4 was written only communication in an accessible electronic format.

9. Six dispositions concerning my matters were transmitted on June 30 within twelve minutes.

The Shiptenko disposition was transmitted at 4:23 PM Eastern. The ████████ disposition followed at 4:24 PM. The ███████ reconsideration disposition followed at 4:26 PM. The NeSmith disposition followed at 4:27 PM. The Morrison disposition followed at 4:28 PM. The Burgess disposition followed at 4:35 PM.

Those matters had been pending for materially different periods.

The ███████ grievance had been filed January 23, 2026, 158 days earlier. Reconsideration had opened April 21, 70 days earlier.

The Morrison, NeSmith, and ████████ grievances were filed May 15, 46 days earlier.

The Burgess grievance was filed May 29, 32 days earlier.

The Shiptenko grievance was filed June 17 and was dismissed thirteen days later.

After those different periods of review, six dispositions arrived within twelve minutes, each through the same no reply system.

Please identify in writing any fact above that you contest.

II. THE COMMUNICATION RESTRICTIONS WERE PART OF THE PROCESS YOU WERE DECIDING

The May 4 communications matter because the State Bar itself defined written communication as the means through which I would “effectively participate in the grievance” and have “the same rights and opportunities as non-disabled grievants.”

The accommodation was not treated as separate from the disciplinary process. On May 13, the approved accommodation was used to postpone a disciplinary determination.

Then the written channels narrowed.

On May 15, the Bar stated that it would not engage in further substantive correspondence concerning identified claims and allegations outside formal legal process.

On June 2, the person serving as my ADA contact told me that correspondence to him concerning the grievance process should be used only for accommodation requests.

In the same communication, I was told that an unnamed member of the State Disciplinary Board would review the Burgess grievance.

No one identified you as that member.

No one told me when you received any of the four grievances.

No one provided a written route to you.

No one told me what record had been transmitted.

No one told me whether material submitted after the original grievance packages would reach you.

No one told me whether the respondents would be asked to respond.

No one told me whether a respondent or OGC had supplied information that you would consider.

The May 19 notice provided a mailbox for a withdrawal or a request to supplement, and the June 2 message separately offered an opportunity to request supplementation of the Burgess materials. Neither communication provided a route for questions about status or procedure, including who was reviewing the grievances, what record had been transmitted, or what standard applied.

Then the decisions arrived from OGCNoReply@gabar.org.

Had you made basic written contact identifying yourself as the person who had received the files and would be reviewing them, I could have raised these issues before the decisions issued.

The May 19 notice stated: “Should the reviewer need additional information from you prior to completing the review, the reviewer will request it from you in writing.” No such written request reached me in any of the four matters.

I could have asked what rule governed your review, a question the May 19 notice said would not be processed through the only mailbox I was given.

I could have reminded you that the Bar had already admitted a failure to place timely submissions into a grievance file.

I could have asked whether the corrected material was actually in the files you received.

I could have supplied the continuing ADA record and my June 8 Human Resources complaint concerning related conduct.

I could have asked whether the respondents had provided material and, if so, whether I could correct or supplement the record in response.

I also could have raised before disposition the question that now exists under Rule 4-203(4): whether any delegated dismissal by the Chair was subject to review and approval by the full State Disciplinary Board and whether that step occurred.

Instead, I learned that you were the decision maker from the dismissals themselves.

That communication failure cannot reasonably be separated from the ADA access issue because written communication was the method the State Bar itself had identified for my effective participation.

Several of the four grievances arose from attempts to obtain accommodations, identify an ADA complaint route, address conduct following those requests, and correct an admitted grievance file failure.

The Morrison grievance presents the problem most clearly. The State Bar had already admitted that timely material was received but did not reach the grievance file before a prior decision. Once that occurred, a meaningful opportunity to verify the record before another decision maker became especially important.

Yet I had no identified way to ask you whether your record was complete.

I had no identified way to learn whether you had been told that the system being challenged had already failed at the file level.

I could request to supplement the materials, but I could not ask whether the record you had was complete, and I could not raise the process issues with the person deciding them.

I was hospitalized three times during this period. A channel that accepted requests to supplement but excluded questions about status and procedure did not give me a way to raise these issues with the decision maker before you ruled.

The point is timing. An opportunity to participate while a matter is actually pending is different from trying to reconstruct an undisclosed process after the decisions have already issued.

The State Bar promised participation through writing. The process that followed did not identify the decision maker, did not identify the record, permitted requests to supplement but not questions about status or procedure, and provided no electronic reply route when the decisions issued.

III. THE BAR’S OWN LAWYERS WERE NOT HANDLED UNDER THE SAME PROCESS

The June 30 record shows two different processes.

For grievances I filed against lawyers outside OGC, the Office used its ordinary screening process and identified a standard. In the ████████ matter, OGC wrote that I had:

“failed to satisfy the elements that would sustain a referral of this matter to the State Disciplinary Board”

and invoked a:

“clear and convincing evidence”

standard before stating its reasons.

In the ███████ matter, OGC obtained a sworn response dated February 2, 2026. The April 10 dismissal states:

“I note that our office sent you a letter advising you that you could send a written rebuttal refuting the response”

I submitted rebuttal material on February 3 and February 20. Reconsideration followed, and OGC issued a written June 30 decision stating reasons.

The grievances against OGC lawyers were handled differently. They were routed to a single Board member who was not identified to me before decision. Each was dismissed in one paragraph. No standard was stated. Nothing in the letters shows that a respondent was asked to respond or that I was offered anything to rebut.

The grievances against lawyers outside the Office therefore had a stated standard and written reasons, and in the ███████ matter a respondent response and an invitation to rebut. I am not stating that the standard recited in those matters was the correct one. My point is that a standard was stated and reasons were given, and that neither appears in the four letters concerning the Bar’s own lawyers. The grievances against the Bar’s own lawyers were handled through a different process, and none of those features appears in the record I received. Whatever the intent, a separate process with fewer safeguards for complaints about the Bar’s own staff operates in their favor. That is the effect I am asking you to address.

The limitations on my participation were concrete:

1. I was told the Bar:

“will not engage in further substantive correspondence with you concerning your threatened claims or the allegations set forth in your recent communications outside formal legal process.”

2. I was told:

“correspondence to me regarding the grievance process should only be used to submit requests for accommodations under the ADA.”

3. I was told only that the grievances would go to an unnamed Board member. On May 19, the Morrison and NeSmith grievances were described as matters that “will be considered by a member of the State Disciplinary Board”, while the ████████ grievance “will be considered by OGC”. On June 2, I was told the Burgess grievance “will be reviewed by a member of the State Disciplinary Board.” No notice I received named the member for any of the four. I received no notice of this kind concerning the Shiptenko grievance.

4. I was not given your email address or another written electronic route to you before or with the decisions.

5. I was not given the response and rebuttal opportunity reflected in the ███████ process.

6. I was not given an identified means to raise a conflict or challenge the decision maker’s objectivity. Internal Rule 11 provides:

“A respondent lawyer shall have the right to challenge the competency, qualifications or objectivity of any member of the State Disciplinary Board.”

I have found no corresponding published provision for a complainant.

7. I was not asked for additional information, although Rule 4-203(2) authorizes the Board:

“to require additional information from a complainant, where appropriate”

8. The four decisions were emailed from “Dismissal” <OGCNoReply@gabar.org>, so the electronic channel that delivered the decisions did not accept a reply.

IV. THE PUBLISHED RULES AND THE CONFLICT PROCEDURE QUESTION

The current published rules identify several potentially relevant routes.

Rule 4-202(c) states:

“The screening process may include forwarding information received to the respondent so that the respondent may respond.”

Rule 4-202(e) states:

“Upon completion of its screening of a matter, the Office of the General Counsel shall be empowered to dismiss those matters that do not present sufficient merit to proceed.”

Rule 4-202(f) states:

“Those matters that appear to allege a violation of Part IV, Chapter 1 of the Georgia Rules of Professional Conduct may be forwarded to the State Disciplinary Board pursuant to Rule 4-204.”

The State Disciplinary Board has separate authority under Rule 4-203(2):

“to initiate grievances on its own motion, to require additional information from a complainant, where appropriate, and to dismiss and reject matters that seem unjustified, frivolous, or patently unfounded;”

That provision identifies both a Board dismissal standard and authority to request additional information from the complainant.

Your four letters do not state that any grievance was unjustified, frivolous, or patently unfounded.

They do not state that any grievance failed the “sufficient merit to proceed” standard in Rule 4-202(e).

They state only that you found “no basis” to forward the matter for investigation.

Rule 4-203(4) also provides a written delegation mechanism:

“to delegate the duties of the State Disciplinary Board enumerated in paragraphs (1), (2), (8), (9), (10), and (11) hereof to the Chair of the State Disciplinary Board or such other members as the State Disciplinary Board or its Chair may designate subject to review and approval by the full State Disciplinary Board;”

There is therefore a published mechanism through which duties under Rule 4-203(2) can be delegated to the Chair.

But the delegation is expressly “subject to review and approval by the full State Disciplinary Board.”

That creates a factual question the four letters do not answer: whether the power was delegated to you in these matters and, if so, whether the full Board reviewed and approved each dismissal.

Internal Rule 5 addresses assignment of cases for investigation and states:

“the Clerk of the State Disciplinary Boards shall assign cases for investigation by individual lawyer members of the Board. Such assignment shall be in the sound discretion of the Clerk, except that no assignment shall be made to … the chair of the Board without that member’s prior approval.”

Rule 4-204(a) states:

“Each matter that presents sufficient merit to proceed may be referred with a Notice of Investigation to the State Disciplinary Board for investigation and disposition in accordance with its Rules. The Clerk of the State Disciplinary Boards shall assign a lawyer member of the State Disciplinary Board to be responsible for the investigation. The Office of the General Counsel shall simultaneously assign a staff investigator to assist the State Disciplinary Board member with the investigation.”

Internal Rule 6(b) states:

“The investigating member is encouraged to attempt communication with both the respondent and the complainant as part of the investigation.”

Internal Rule 6(e) states:

“The Office of the General Counsel will assign each Board member an investigator to assist with the investigation.”

Rule 4-204.1 requires a Notice of Investigation to provide the respondent:

“the name and address of the State Disciplinary Board member assigned to investigate the grievance”

The published investigative process therefore tells the respondent who the assigned Board member is.

I was not given your name or address before June 30. The May 19 and June 2 notices told me only that “a member of the State Disciplinary Board” would consider or review the grievances.

Internal Rule 14 also provides:

“Any presentations to the Board should be by brief, memorandum or in other written form”

Written participation is therefore consistent with the Board’s own process. It was also the accommodation the Bar had already granted me.

Rule 4-221.2 states:

“In all proceedings under this Chapter, the burden of proof shall be on the State Bar of Georgia.”

The four June 30 letters do not identify which of these procedures governed.

There is also a separate conflict procedure issue.

I reviewed the current published State Bar handbook, including the Bar Rules, the State Disciplinary Board Internal Rules, the Review Board Internal Rules, and the published Standing Policies.

I have found no published rule or policy specifically stating how a grievance against a lawyer employed by OGC is to be screened, routed, assigned, or decided, how OGC’s institutional conflict in that circumstance is addressed, or how a complainant can raise that conflict.

The published conflict provisions I located address different circumstances.

Internal Rule 19 addresses disqualification when a Board member, or the Board member’s partners or associates, represents a respondent.

Internal Rule 11 gives a respondent lawyer a right to challenge the competency, qualifications, or objectivity of any member of the State Disciplinary Board.

Standing Board Policy 600 addresses personal and financial conflicts involving Bar officers, members of the Board of Governors and the Executive Committee, and staff.

I found no published procedure addressing the institutional conflict presented when the respondents themselves are lawyers in the office that ordinarily receives and screens grievances.

That absence matters because the General Counsel, through Mr. Shiptenko, announced the special routing to me, OGC remained involved in transmitting the resulting dispositions, and no published procedure told me who would decide, how that person would be selected, what safeguards would apply, or how I could raise a conflict.

When grievances against the Bar’s own lawyers are routed without a published rule governing that conflict, a complainant cannot determine in advance whether the same procedure is being applied consistently or how the fairness of the process can be tested.

If a written rule, policy, delegation, internal procedure, or conflict protocol did govern these four matters, please identify it.

V. QUESTIONS ONLY YOU CAN ANSWER

Please answer each of the following in writing, and please answer each part of each numbered question separately.

1. Was the State Disciplinary Board’s authority concerning these four matters delegated to you under Rule 4-203(4)? If so, who made that delegation and when? Were any of the matters assigned to you under Internal Rule 5 with your prior approval? Did the full State Disciplinary Board review and approve each of your four dismissals as Rule 4-203(4) provides? If so, on what date did that review and approval occur for each matter?

2. Which standard did you apply to each matter: Rule 4-203(2), under which the Board may dismiss or reject matters that seem “unjustified, frivolous, or patently unfounded”; Rule 4-202(e), under which OGC may dismiss matters that do not present “sufficient merit to proceed”; or another standard? If another standard was used, please identify it and the written authority containing it.

3. Rule 4-203(2) expressly authorizes the Board “to require additional information from a complainant, where appropriate.” The May 19 notice told me that “the reviewer will request it from you in writing” if additional information was needed. Did you consider requesting additional information from me before dismissing any of these matters? If so, what additional information did you consider requesting and what occurred?

4. Did you consider making basic written contact with me before deciding the matters to identify yourself as the reviewer, confirm what record you had received, or provide a route for supplemental information? If not, what did you understand to be the reason no such communication occurred?

5. What did you receive in each matter? Please state whether you received only my grievance and exhibits or whether you also received any respondent response, OGC summary, recommendation, cover communication, conflict analysis, factual characterization, routing instruction, proposed disposition, or other material. Please identify each category of additional material received.

6. Did you receive submissions I made after May 15, 2026, including later ADA related correspondence and my June 8, 2026 Human Resources complaint?

7. Were you told before ruling that I am a disabled grievant and that OGC had granted a written only accommodation on May 4 so that I could effectively participate in the grievance process?

8. Were you told of the May 15 and June 2 restrictions placed on my written communications before you made the four decisions?

9. Were you told that on April 21 the State Bar had acknowledged that timely submissions were not added to the grievance file before an earlier dismissal was reviewed?

10. Was Morrison, NeSmith, Burgess, or Shiptenko asked to respond concerning the grievance against that person under the process contemplated by Rule 4-202(c)? If so, please identify each response received. If a respondent or OGC supplied information to you, what written route did you understand I had to see, correct, or answer that information before you ruled?

11. Did any other member of the State Disciplinary Board participate in any of the four matters before you made your decisions? Was a staff investigator assigned to any matter?

12. Who drafted each June 30 letter, and who transmitted each letter? Did any lawyer employed by OGC participate in drafting, editing, reviewing, approving, recommending, or transmitting any disposition concerning an OGC lawyer?

13. What written route did you understand I had to reach you, verify the completeness of the record, or submit additional material before June 30?

14. Please identify any written rule, policy, delegation, conflict procedure, internal protocol, or other authority that governed how grievances against lawyers employed by OGC were to be received, screened, routed, assigned, and decided. If no such written procedure governed these matters, please state that directly. If any confidentiality provision limits your ability to answer any question above, please identify the provision and the specific question it reaches.

VI. FORMAL REQUEST FOR RECONSIDERATION AND PRESERVATION

Internal Rule 16 provides:

“The Office of the General Counsel, the complainant or the respondent may request reconsideration of the Board’s decision in a matter at any time before a Formal Complaint is filed in the Supreme Court. The investigating member may review the request and decide if the matter should be presented to the entire Board. If the investigating member is no longer on the Board, the Chair may review the request.”

To the extent the June 30 dismissals constitute decisions of the State Disciplinary Board, I formally request reconsideration under Internal Rule 16 of ███████-Morrison 1, ███████-NeSmith 1, ███████-Burgess 1, and ███████-Shiptenko 1.

I request that each matter be presented to the entire State Disciplinary Board.

If reconsideration is granted and the matters present sufficient merit to proceed, I request that they be referred for investigation under Rule 4-204(a), with an assigned Board member and staff investigator as that rule provides.

I am not asking the Board to presume misconduct by any respondent.

I am asking for review through a process whose authority is identified, whose record can be verified, and through which the written communication accommodation the Bar granted can function as an actual means of participation.

If a respondent supplies information during reconsideration or any subsequent investigation, I request an accessible written opportunity to correct or supplement the record before a new disposition is entered.

Please also preserve your complete working files concerning all four matters.

That includes email, notes, drafts, assignment records, routing communications, records of any delegation under Rule 4-203(4), records of any full Board review or approval, anything received from OGC, anything received from a respondent, communications with other Board members, and records concerning preparation and transmission of the June 30 letters.

Please identify where the official and working files for these four matters are presently held and who is responsible for their custody.

Please provide your written answers to the questions in Section V, and written acknowledgment that the reconsideration request in Section VI has been received and docketed, on or before Thursday, September 24, 2026, at 5:00 PM Eastern. I understand that a decision on reconsideration itself may take longer, and I ask that it follow in writing. Because this letter asks what you personally did and what you personally received, I ask that the response come from you.

Respectfully,

██████ ███████

I am a person with a disability. I request written communication by email in an accessible electronic format as a reasonable modification and for effective communication under 28 C.F.R. §§ 35.130(b)(7) and 35.160. I use assistive technology to prepare written communications, so please allow for occasional typographical errors and identify any portion that requires clarification.