Another hit job failed

The Playbook Collapsed: The Courts and Disciplinary System Reject the Ravich–Scola Attack

For nearly a year, Vladimir Ravich and his attorney, John A. Scola, pursued litigation that increasingly moved away from Ravich’s claims against Deputy Chief Winston M. Faison and the City of New York and directly toward me. They challenged my continued representation of Faison, accused me of operating under an ethical conflict, sought to remove me as counsel, pursued the issue through the Appellate Division, and extended the attack into the attorney disciplinary system. By the time it was over, this was no longer simply a dispute about who could represent whom. My professional integrity, reputation, law practice, relationship with my client, and ultimately my license to practice law had all been placed into controversy.

I am not going to describe that as ordinary hard-fought litigation merely because the strategy was dressed in motions, appellate papers, and professional complaints. The target was obvious. Ravich had previously consulted me as a prospective client, although that consultation never resulted in an attorney-client relationship. After I later represented Faison in a separate discrimination and retaliation matter, Ravich and Scola attempted to convert that prior consultation into a disqualifying conflict under Rule 1.18 of the New York Rules of Professional Conduct.

If that strategy worked, the consequences were substantial. Faison would lose his chosen counsel. His separate case would be disrupted. I would have an adverse ethical ruling attached to my name. The Sanders Firm, P.C. would be associated publicly with a finding that its principal had undertaken a representation he was professionally prohibited from handling. And an accusation they created would become an institutional determination they could repeat indefinitely.

That never happened.

The attack failed before Justice Carol Sharpe. It failed again through additional motion practice before her. Ravich then took the central disqualification issue to the Appellate Division, First Department, where a unanimous panel affirmed the rejection of his theory. The controversy later reached the attorney disciplinary system, where the complaint was investigated and the Committee determined to take no further action.

That progression did not surprise me because I had already identified what I believed was happening while the campaign was still underway.

On December 11, 2025, I published When the Playbook Fails: How the City Learned to Fight Back Against Weaponized Litigation. I wrote then that lawyers who refuse to validate a manufactured narrative can themselves become targets through “harassment, disciplinary threats, or public distortion of their role.” I specifically identified procedural harassment, disciplinary referrals, and attorney targeting as components of the same litigation playbook.

On December 17, 2025, I published Judge Sharpe Denies Motion to Disqualify Eric Sanders; Orders Hearing Into Plaintiff’s Submissions. Justice Sharpe had rejected the effort to remove me from Faison’s representation and identified discrepancies in materials submitted during the proceedings sufficiently serious to warrant further inquiry.

Then, on June 17, 2026, I published First Department Unanimously Affirms Decision Rejecting Attempt to Disqualify Civil-Rights Attorney Eric Sanders. The First Department had unanimously affirmed Justice Sharpe and rejected the showing Ravich needed under Rule 1.18. He failed to establish that his prior consultation with me was substantially related to Faison’s separate discrimination and retaliation matter, and he failed to establish that information allegedly communicated during that consultation had the potential to be significantly harmful to him. The Court also held that, to the extent Ravich sought to maintain privilege over emails he had himself placed into the public record, that privilege had been waived.

Those publications are important for one reason: they establish the contemporaneous record. I did not invent the weaponization argument after the outcomes became favorable. I identified it while the attack was occurring, before I knew where the courts or disciplinary system would ultimately land. The rulings came afterward.

Now so has the ending.

They tried to manufacture an ethical conflict and remove me from my client

Rule 1.18 was the vehicle.

The Rule properly protects genuine confidential information received from prospective clients. A person does not have to become a formal client before certain professional obligations can arise. But that principle does not give every person who once consulted a lawyer indefinite control over that lawyer’s future representations.

As relevant here, Ravich needed to establish the relationship between the prior consultation and Faison’s matter necessary to trigger disqualification and that the information allegedly received could be significantly harmful to him in the later matter. Those requirements mattered because Ravich and Scola were seeking one of the most disruptive remedies available in litigation: removing a client’s chosen lawyer.

This was never some academic ethics question.

They wanted me out.

Disqualification would have forced Faison to replace counsel in a separate discrimination and retaliation matter, disrupted the continuity of the representation, increased costs, delayed the case, and deprived him of the lawyer who had been developing his claims and strategy. At the same time, it would have done something equally valuable to those attacking me: it would have created a judicial ruling that could be used to portray my professional judgment as unethical.

That is why the motion mattered beyond Faison’s case.

Ravich and Scola were attempting to turn a prior consultation into something much larger than the consultation itself. They wanted it transformed into an official finding that I should never have been representing Faison in the first place.

But accusations do not establish conflicts. Evidence does.

Once the matter was placed before Justice Sharpe, the allegations had to survive actual judicial scrutiny. They did not. Instead of obtaining the ruling they sought against me, the proceeding raised questions about discrepancies within materials they had submitted in support of their position. Justice Sharpe directed further inquiry rather than accepting the evidentiary presentation at face value.

That development cannot be separated from the nature of the attack. Ravich and Scola went to court asking a judge to scrutinize my professional conduct. The Court did exactly what courts are supposed to do: it scrutinized the record. That scrutiny did not produce my disqualification.

Ravich then pursued appellate review.

The First Department did not rescue the theory. It unanimously affirmed.

That should have ended any serious suggestion that simply invoking Rule 1.18 established anything improper about my representation. A full appellate panel had now examined the issue, applied the governing standard, and concluded that Ravich had not made the showing necessary to remove me.

The accusation had been tested.

It failed.

This was an attack on my reputation and my business

That point needs to be stated plainly because too much professional commentary treats attacks against lawyers as though they become harmless the moment the lawyer ultimately prevails.

They do not.

My reputation is not some abstract personal asset disconnected from my work. It is part of the business I spent more than twenty years building. Clients hire lawyers based upon judgment, credibility, experience, and professional integrity. When an adversary publicly accuses a lawyer of ethical misconduct, seeks to disqualify him, pursues appellate review of the ethical accusation, and carries the controversy into the disciplinary system, the lawyer’s professional reputation is directly implicated.

The Sanders Firm, P.C. bears my name. An allegation that I acted unethically does not remain confined to a caption on a motion. It reaches the firm. It reaches existing clients. It reaches prospective clients. It reaches lawyers and institutions that deal with the firm. It becomes something searchable, repeatable, and capable of being stripped from the context in which it arose.

That carries economic consequences.

It consumes time that would otherwise be devoted to clients. It requires resources from the law firm. It forces the lawyer to defend his own professional conduct while simultaneously continuing to represent the client whose interests triggered the attack. It creates material that can be found by prospective clients searching the lawyer’s name. And it gives other adversaries an opportunity to point to the existence of the accusations while conveniently ignoring whether any court ever found them true.

That is why I refuse to trivialize what happened here merely because I survived it.

The attempt to damage my business does not become acceptable because the attack ultimately failed. The attempt to damage my reputation does not become harmless because the courts refused to remove me. The attempt to place my professional license under scrutiny does not become insignificant because the disciplinary process ultimately produced no action.

The outcomes vindicate me.

They do not erase the attack.

There is a significant difference.

For almost a year, I was required to deal with allegations that went directly to my professional integrity. That was not incidental collateral damage from litigation against Faison. Once Ravich and Scola chose to attack my continued representation and make my ethics an issue, the consequences became personal and professional to me.

They cannot now separate themselves from that choice simply because the strategy failed.

They wanted my conduct judged.

It was.

They wanted institutional action against me.

They did not get it.

And because they chose to attack the reputation upon which my law practice depends, I have every right to state just as publicly how the attack ended.

Vindication

There is nothing left to litigate about what this campaign did to my professional reputation and business. Ravich and Scola chose to make my ethics part of their litigation strategy, and Ravich ultimately carried the attack into the disciplinary system. In doing so, they forced me and The Sanders Firm, P.C. to spend time and resources defending a professional reputation that took more than twenty years to build. They put my relationship with a client at risk, placed allegations of professional misconduct into the public record, and subjected my law license to scrutiny.

Now they have to live with the outcome.

I am not going to pretend that vindication requires silence, restraint, or some artificial display of professional courtesy toward the people who launched the attack. They did not exercise that restraint when my name, my business, and my professional integrity were placed in jeopardy. They made those matters public and adversarial. The fact that the campaign failed is therefore every bit as legitimate a subject of public discussion as the accusations they chose to make.

That is the part too often lost when lawyers are targeted personally. The accusation is treated as news; the vindication is expected to disappear quietly into the procedural record. I reject that completely. When someone attempts to use the courts and disciplinary machinery to damage a lawyer’s professional standing, and the effort ultimately produces nothing against that lawyer, the ending matters just as much as the accusation.

My reputation was attacked. My business was attacked. My professional judgment was attacked. My relationship with my client was attacked. My license was placed into controversy. Those were not incidental consequences of litigation. They were foreseeable consequences of the course Ravich and Scola chose to pursue.

And after all of it, they have nothing to show for the professional attack they launched against me.

That is the vindication.

I remain exactly where they were trying to prevent me from being: representing my client, practicing law, operating the firm bearing my name, and continuing the same civil-rights and employment work that made removing me so attractive in the first place.

They chose to make this personal.

They chose to attack the reputation and business I spent decades building.

They chose to put my ethics and professional standing into issue.

Now the record belongs to me too.

Another hit job failed.

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