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William B. Knowles (WSBA No. 17211, admitted 1987), of Seattle, resigned in lieu of disbarment, effective September 20, 2007. This resignation was based on conduct in 2004 involving two felonies. William B. Knowles is to be distinguished from William F. Knowles of Seattle.
In or about June or July 2004, Mr. Knowles engaged in sexually related communications over the Internet with someone he believed to be a 14-year-old girl from Portland, Oregon. Mr. Knowles arranged over the Internet to meet with this individual for the purposes of engaging in sexual activity and traveled from Seattle to Portland for this encounter. Unbeknownst to him, the person with whom he had been communicating was an FBI agent, not a 14-year-old girl. In July 2004, Mr. Knowles was arrested in Portland at the location where the meeting had been arranged. Mr. Knowles was charged with violating 18 U.S.C. § 2422(b) (Coercion and Enticement) and 18 U.S.C. § 2423(b) (Interstate Travel with the Intent to Engage in Sex with a Minor), both of which are felonies. In August 2007, a jury found him guilty on both counts.
Mr. Knowles closed his law practice in July 2004 after his arrest. Two of Mr. Knowles’s remaining clients at the time had hired him to represent them in employment matters. Mr. Knowles did not perform the specified services according to his fee agreement with each client and failed to refund unearned fees to these clients after his law firm closed. A third remaining client had hired Mr. Knowles to appeal a whistleblower complaint against his employer to the Merit Systems Protection Board. During the time Mr. Knowles represented this client, the client did not receive any billing statements or any indication of the time Mr. Knowles had spent on his case or how much of the fee had been expended.
Mr. Knowles’s conduct violated former RPC 1.4, requiring a lawyer to keep a client reasonably informed about the status of a matter, to promptly comply with reasonable requests for information, and to explain a matter to the extent reasonably necessary to permit the client to make informed decisions regarding the representation; former RPC 1.5(a), requiring a lawyer’s fee to be reasonable; former RPC 1.15(d), requiring a lawyer to take steps to the extent reasonably practicable to protect a client’s interests upon termination of representation; RPC 8.4(b), prohibiting a lawyer from committing a criminal act (here, coercion and enticement and interstate travel with the intent to engage in sex with a minor) that reflects adversely on the lawyer’s honesty, trustworthiness, or fitness as a lawyer in other respects; RPC 8.4(i), which prohibits a lawyer from, inter alia, committing any act which reflects disregard for the rule of law, whether the same be committed in the course of his or her conduct as a lawyer.
Joanne S. Abelson represented the Bar Association. Mr. Knowles represented himself. |