Convicted Florida Lawyer Paul Luskin Permanently Disbarred

Convicted Florida Lawyer Paul Luskin Permanently Disbarred

It’s hard to imagine life getting worse for someone who spent 14 years in prison for hiring a hitman to (unsuccessfully) murder his wife, and who was also disbarred at the time for practicing law for five years. 

But “worse” is exactly where life is heading for ex-Florida lawyer Paul B. Luskin, who has once again leapt into the headlines for practicing law without a license.

Luskin, who is infamous for hiring a flower deliveryman to kill his wife in 1988 during a bitter divorce battle, and perhaps even more notorious for maintaining his innocence for 14 years before a change of heart (and perhaps the carrot of knocking 10 years off his sentence) led to a dramatic courtroom confession in 2002, was recently sanctioned by the Florida bar for practicing law without a license.

Evidently, Luskin, who was paroled in 2002, set up a Fort Lauderdale business known as “Federal Criminal Research” and pocketed $1600 for writing an appellate brief for a Federal prison inmate – which the inmate later called “worthless,” and the Florida bar later called “illegal.”

It’s unclear whether the inmate in question has yet exacted his pound of flesh for the alleged wrongdoing, but the Florida bar has taken swift, decisive action by invoking its version of the death penalty: permanent disbarment.

“We don’t take UPL lightly,” commented Florida bar spokeswoman Francine Walker, in an interview with the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. “Permanently disbarred lawyers can never practice again.”