The state Supreme Court has ordered a Lafayette attorney be suspended for three years.
The suspension of George R. Knox began in December 2023, when his interim suspension began.
According to the Louisiana Bar Association website, Knox has been in eligible to practice law since September 2023, when he was deemed "inegligible" due to unpaid bar dues and an unpaid disciplinary assessment.
The December 2023 interim suspension came after Knox made an agreement with the Office of Disciplinary Council; at that time there were two separate sets of formal charges pending against him, and he said he wanted to "cooperate with the ODC moving forward and be placed on interim suspension pending resolution of the formal charges.”
In February 2024, the Court accepted an agreement between Knox and the ODC after an investigation of seven complaints.
In that agreement, Knox admitted "that he practiced law while ineligible to do so and failed to cooperate with the ODC’s investigation of seven complaints. For this misconduct, which occurred between August 2022 and October 2023, we suspended respondent from the practice of law for one year and one day, retroactive to the date of his interim suspension."
Before he tried to be reinstated from that suspension, the Court ordered that Knox comply with the conditions in that agreement, in particular an evaluation by the Judges and Lawyers Assistance Program. To date, Knox has not filed for reinstatement, the Court noted.
Now the Court is considering another allegation, which involved a woman who hired Knox to represent her in an alimony/child support case. She paid him $5,000 but he "failed to move the matter forward and failed to provide (his client) with updates regarding her case," the Court noted. He didn't show up for one meeting with the other side, and in one case he set up a meeting but didn't tell his client, so it had to be postponed. She went to his office to talk to him, but he was never there, and when she asked him to refund her payment he didn't respond, the Court found.
The client filed a complaint against Knox in 2024, but when the ODC tried to notify Knox the letter was returned by the post office. A second letter and an email did not elicit a response from Knox, and a second email was rejected.
The ODC filed formal charges against him in May 2025, alleging that he had failed to provide competent representation to the client, that he failed to follow rules for registration and changes of address, that he failed to act with reasonable diligence and promptness representing a client, that he failed to communicate with his client, that he failed to refund an unearned fee and he failed to cooperate with an ODC investigation.
Knox failed to answer the formal charges, and under the rules that means he admitted to them. He also didn't provide any argument or documents to the hearing committee, which decided to recommend the suspension.
The Court agreed with the hearing committee's recommendation, although one Justice did say he felt the three year suspension was too lenient.
The Court indicated that, should Knox want to be reinstated as an attorney in the future, he'll have to prove he had an accounting of that client's fee done and return any unearned money to her.
If you want to read the full document from the Court, click here.
