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Attorney Percy Squire, a Youngstown native, is getting his law license back
COLUMBUS
After having his law license suspended for more than four years, Percy Squire, a Youngstown native, will have it reinstated within 30 days.
The Ohio Supreme Court voted 4-3 Tuesday to allow Squire, who lives in Columbus, to resume his law practice as long as he pays $2,798 to the attorney general’s office for outstanding costs and interest owed in his disciplinary proceedings in the next 30 days.
The court’s Board of Commissioners on Grievances and Discipline recommended last month that Squire’s petition for reinstatement be denied.
Squire “wholly failed to demonstrate, by clear and convincing evidence, that he has been rehabilitated from his prior serious acts of misconduct or that he is currently fit to be rehabilitated to the practice of law in Ohio,” wrote Scott J. Drexel, the court’s disciplinary counsel in a Nov. 16 objection to reinstatement.
The court also ruled 4-3 on Nov. 3, 2011, to indefinitely suspend Squire’s law license “for professional misconduct in his dealings with multiple clients.” The board of commissioners had recommended a two-year suspension with the second year stayed. But the majority of the court’s members voted for a stiffer penalty.
Squire filed a request on July 9, 2014, to be reinstated.
On Oct. 30 of this year, Squire, a Youngstown East High School graduate, filed a document with the court acknowledging he “engaged in serious misconduct” and “regret[s] my behavior. “But he wrote he was primarily suspended because court investigators “improperly obtained evidence” by questioning four of his clients without telling them they had attorney-client privilege.
“This is clearly irregular and highly prejudiced,” Squire wrote.
In the 2011 decision, the court wrote that Squire “misappropriated and mishandled client funds, failed to keep funds held for clients separate from his personal funds, failed to maintain adequate records of client funds entrusted to him, and entered into business relationships with clients without notifying them of conflicts of interest inherent in those relationships.”
The court determined Squire “converted proceeds from a $113,228 insurance payment he received” from Mark Lay, a client, in April 2008 and used the money without Lay’s knowledge. Lay was an investment adviser – represented by Squire in court – convicted of fraud related to the loss of $216 million in an Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation scandal.
Squire was born and raised in Youngstown and owned radio stations here. He briefly ran for mayor in 2001, but withdrew before the election.