In the Matter of Stanley J. Kakol, Jr.

Stanley J. Kakol, Jr., a Georgia lawyer admitted to the bar in 1985, was hired in three separate cases to file bankruptcy petitions so that clients could stop foreclosure on their homes. In each case, Kakol filed incomplete or 'skeletal' petitions, then failed to fix the deficiencies the bankruptcy courts identified, and the cases were ultimately dismissed. In one case he also took on a client at a third party's request while allowing that third party to pay for and direct the representation, and in another his failures led to a client being improperly harassed by a mortgage lender despite a court-ordered stay. As a result of these dismissals, homeowners' foreclosures went forward. After the State Bar filed a formal complaint, Kakol admitted violating several Georgia Rules of Professional Conduct and asked to voluntarily surrender his law license rather than contest discipline. The State Bar supported the request, noting Kakol's four prior disciplinary actions. The Supreme Court of Georgia accepted the surrender, which counts as disbarment.

The court held that Kakol's admitted violations of the rules requiring competence, diligence, adherence to client objectives, and avoidance of conflicting interests, combined with his disciplinary history, warranted accepting his voluntary surrender of license, which is treated the same as disbarment.

The decision permanently removes an attorney from practicing law in Georgia after repeated failures left clients' homes foreclosed upon. It signals to homeowners facing foreclosure and to the legal profession that incomplete bankruptcy filings and conflicts of interest involving third-party payers carry serious professional consequences.

Voluntary surrender of license accepted (disbarment)

1. The court reviewed Kakol's petition for voluntary surrender of license, in which he admitted, for purposes of the petition only, that he violated Rule 1.1 (competence), Rule 1.2 (abiding by client objectives), Rule 1.3 (diligence), and Rule 1.7 (conflicts of interest) across three separate bankruptcy matters tied to home foreclosures.
2. In each matter, Kakol filed incomplete bankruptcy petitions and then failed to correct deficiencies the bankruptcy court identified, leading to dismissal of the cases and, in two instances, the homeowners' homes being foreclosed upon.
3. In one matter, Kakol took direction and payment from a third party that had its own contract to purchase the homeowner's house, which the court treated as supporting a conflict-of-interest violation because the third party's interests could have affected his representation of the homeowner client.
4. The court weighed the State Bar's analysis under the ABA Standards for Imposing Lawyer Sanctions and the purposes of discipline described in prior Georgia cases, namely punishing the offending lawyer, deterring other lawyers, and reassuring the public that courts police the legal profession.
5. The court found this result consistent with prior Georgia cases accepting voluntary surrender of license for comparable violations of the competence, diligence, and client-objectives rules in mishandled legal matters, and also considered Kakol's four prior instances of discipline since 1994.
6. Based on these admissions and the comparable precedent, the court accepted the petition, treating the voluntary surrender as equivalent to disbarment and removing Kakol from the rolls of attorneys authorized to practice in Georgia.

• attorney discipline
• voluntary surrender of license
• foreclosure
• bankruptcy petitions
• State Bar of Georgia