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In re Raykin
In May 2022, during a meeting with Mesa County Valley School District 51 staff, attorney Igor Raykin directed several inappropriate expletive-laden outbursts at the staff in the presence of his minor client and his client’s parents.
The meeting was with the school district’s staff to review the individual education plan, or IEP, of one of Raykin’s clients. The meeting was hybrid, with Raykin, his client and the client’s parents attending remotely.
Over the course of the approximately 80-minute call, Raykin made several profane and disparaging comments directed toward the school district’s staff, according to court documents.
After repeatedly telling one of the participants from the school district to “shut up,” Raykin began cursing, citing an allegedly incorrect document he received from the district via email. After he was muted and asked to stop cursing, he claimed he would start every sentence with the expletive.
A few minutes later, Raykin called a district attendee a “miserable person.” He then said, “One of us is a lawyer, and the other one is you.” Approximately two minutes later, the district attendee told Raykin, “We wish you would be quiet,” to allow the meeting to continue. Raykin replied to them, saying, “I wish you would actually stop working here and go work where you really belong, which is in the gutter, ok? So please go ahead and get yourself employed where you need to be.”
Toward the end of the meeting, Raykin made more disparaging comments to the district attendee and continued cursing. The next day, Raykin sent an email to one of the district attendees referring to another attendee of the call as a “despicable creature and a cancer to kids.”
Raykin’s conduct at the meeting was reported to the Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel.
After a request for investigation was filed with OARC, Raykin submitted his initial response on Aug. 24, 2022. In this response letter he wrote, “I did call [the district attendee] a ‘despicable creature and a cancer to kids.’ Ok, I like to call things what they are.” Raykin further wrote, “If I have to scream at someone or intimidate them or release my anger in order to get what’s best for a [child with special needs], then so be it.”
In the same response letter, Raykin stated, “I have attention deficit disorder, intermittent explosive disorder, and oppositional defiant disorder. Frankly, I don’t think any of these things are ‘disorders.’ I have dealt with these things since adolescence.” Raykin also wrote, “But sometimes these conditions are useful. And if these conditions are necessary to represent kids more effectively, then I suppose that having them is better than not having them.”
On Nov. 23, 2022, Raykin wrote a supplemental response to OARC. In it, he mentioned again that he has been diagnosed with various disorders, including intermittent explosive disorder. He said he understood how his earlier response letter could be “hurtful,” and that it was “unproductive,” “dumb” and “selfish.”
On Feb. 29, 2024, Raykin wrote a letter of apology to the school district employees who attended the May 18, 2022 meeting. In it, he acknowledged victimizing people in the room.
At a two-day disciplinary hearing, Raykin said he began seeing an anger management specialist during OARC’s investigation, and he argued that he viewed his mental health issues as a mitigating factor in the case.
OARC investigated and filed a complaint with the presiding disciplinary judge, alleging that Raykin violated Rule 4.4(a) of the Colorado Rules of Professional Conduct, which addresses an attorney’s respect for the rights of third persons. OARC also sought sanctions for the violation.
A hearing board concluded that Raykin’s conduct at the meeting violated Rule 4.4(a) because the conduct had no substantial purpose other than to delay, embarrass or burden the school district’s staff. After weighing the aggravating and mitigating circumstances, the hearing board determined that the appropriate sanctions were a public censure and an independent medical examination.
Raykin appealed the hearing board’s determination, as well as two other PDJ orders, to the Colorado Supreme Court.
Raykin’s primary objection to the hearing board’s sanctions relies on the language and structure of the American Bar Association’s Standards for Imposing Lawyer Sanctions, which the Supreme Court noted it used as its guiding authority in determining appropriate sanctions in this case.
The Colorado Supreme Court noted in its opinion that it took this opportunity to make clear that the ABA’s standards are a starting point — an important guiding authority — but not a text that supersedes the Colorado Rules of Professional Conduct.
In this case, the state’s high court determined the PDJ correctly determined that Raykin’s conduct violated his duties as a professional. It also found the sanctions imposed are appropriate, and it affirmed the hearing board’s final decision and the PDJ’s denial of both prehearing motions.