Complaint Review: Richard Socarides Esq.

Richard Socarides was an advisor to the Clinton administration and uses that fact often in his biographical materials.

He presently is of counsel to Brady Klein & Weissman, LLP, who are representing Brad Ingalls in a legal matter.

Ingalls in a criminal case was arraigned on a domestic violence felony assault charge and later convicted of an assault charge.  The conviction can be verified in public records; Manhattan Criminal Court docket number 2007NY070791

It recently came to our attention that Richard Socarides, Esq. had accepted Brad Ingalls as a Facebook friend.

There is, obviously, nothing wrong in Mr. Socarides providing legal services to a convicted domestic violence offender.  However, for Mr. Socarides to "friend" a current legal services client on Facebook is dubious on many grounds, grounds which we consider obvious.

We made a direct e-mail protest to Mr. Socarides.  He subsequently removed himself from Ingalls' Facebook friends list.  However, we had to make the protest for that to happen.  How many similar things might Mr. Socarides be doing right now? That he was capable of doing it once shows that he would be capable of doing it any number of times.

Society should be sending a strong and unwavering message to abusers that we will not allow them to victimize innocent people.  The last thing needed is a prominent, wealthy lawyer with Clinton administration connections putting his firms bottom line above the safety of potential victims.