Nearly one out of 10 of the state's licensed attorneys had their law licenses suspended Thursday for failure to pay fees owed to the state.

In enforcing a provisional change to state rules for admission to the bar, the Arkansas Supreme Court issued an order Thursday notifying 934 of the 10,490 attorneys licensed to practice law in Arkansas that they are not welcome in a courtroom until they have caught up on their license fees as well as late-payment fees.

The 934 attorneys will receive notice of the suspension of their law licenses. A copy of the list also will be provided to every judge in the state, according to Arkansas Bar Association President Brian Ratcliff.

More than 60 percent of the suspended attorneys have out-of-state addresses.

"I was disappointed in the large number of names," Ratcliff said. "Our hope is ... it will be on [attorneys'] radar more and it won't be near as big next time. We wanted it to be public so people would recognize names and call people. It is a little embarrassing."

None of the state's 28 prosecuting attorneys, 121 circuit judges or its seven Supreme Court justices or nine appellate judges were on the list.

Ratcliff said the suspension can be "fixed within a day" but that there's no excuse for attorneys not to keep up with their annual fees.

According to the Supreme Court clerk's office, attorneys in their first three years of practice are expected to pay $125 a year, while the rest pay $200 annually.

"We hope it isn't as large next year," Ratcliff said. "I consider it a privilege to practice law, and I would hope others would to pay their Supreme Court fees so they could practice."

Included in the list of suspended licenses was Vic Snyder, the medical doctor and former seven-term Democratic Arkansas congressman from Little Rock.

Reached by phone Thursday, Snyder said he recalled sending in a check for an annual license, which for attorneys over 65 years old is only $20.

A few weeks later, Snyder said, the check came back in the mail from the clerk's office with a note telling him he'd have to pay more because he'd missed the deadline. He said he didn't see the point in anteing up the extra money.

"I've never practiced law. ... I've been on inactive status; I've always been on inactive status and never made a dime on it," he said. "I figured I could do something different with my $20."

The order released by the state's highest court, and administrator of the bar rules, followed a series of notices sent to the same attorneys that their fees were due Jan. 1 of 2015.

Officials with the court said the notices, mandated by a newly crafted version of "Rule VII" of the bar's bylaws, were sent out in December, again March 1 and again April 1.

Attorneys had until April 15 to pay their fees as well as late penalties of $100 if not paid by March 1 and $200 if not paid by April 1.

Copies of the notice of suspension, as well as the court's order, also were sent to the attorneys, the court staff said.

The new rule was the result of a series of lawsuits last year that revealed many attorneys and judges frequently had their licenses suspended for nonpayment of license fees.

Three candidates for judge positions were accused of being ineligible for office in civil suits because they had had their law licenses temporarily suspended for nonpayment.

Eventually, the cases against Angela Byrd and H.G. Foster, who ran in the state's 20th Judicial Circuit in Faulkner, Van Buren and Searcy counties, as well as a case against Pulaski County Circuit Judge Tim Fox, reached the Arkansas Supreme Court.

In May 2014, the high court ruled that though Amendment 80 of the state constitution requires an attorney to be licensed for six years before running for judicial office, a suspension for nonpayment did mean that an attorney stopped being licensed.

An analysis of suspensions between 2006 and mid-2014 by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette showed that 81 of the 256 circuit, district and appellate judges were at one point suspended for not paying fees.

In total, the analysis found that there were about 6,000 suspensions issued to nearly half of the 8,200 active attorneys at that time.

After the Arkansas Supreme Court ruled an older version of Rule VII unconstitutional in May 2014, it asked the Arkansas Bar Association to create a task force to develop a new version of Rule VII.

Ratcliff said the intent was to provide attorneys with "due process" in the form of notices and warnings, that their licenses may be suspended.

Many of the licenses now suspended by the state's highest court are for attorneys residing out of state.

Ratcliff said he didn't know why so many of the 934 names were out-of-state attorneys but said it was concerning.

"I was surprised by the number," Ratcliff said. "It jumped off the page to me that there were a lot of out-of-state people."

Ratcliff said the rule, as of now, is still provisional and that the Supreme Court will likely make a final determination on it next month.

The court is allowing public comment on the new rule until June 1.

Ratcliff said it's too early to know how the final version of Rule VII and the handling of fees will look like, but speculated that it might be "tweaked" before being set in stone.

Metro on 05/08/2015