The Board of Bar Overseers (BBO) is pleased to introduce its new website platform for the posting of orders and decisions in bar discipline and reinstatement matters. Our new platform, powered by Lexum, contains all attorney discipline cases since the BBO’s creation in 1974. It includes decisions from the Supreme Judicial Court as well as the Board of Bar Overseers and its hearing committees. We have discontinued the publication of the Massachusetts Attorney Disciplinary Reports (MADR).
We have instituted a new format for citing cases, as follows
Matter of Lawyer, [document ID] [forum and date].
Case type includes the following abbreviations: ADM (Admonition); DDC (Disciplinary Decision); REI (Reinstatement); or DIS (Dismissal)
Document ID is the number assigned by our database to the case which includes year, type, and ID number. Example: 2025/DDC/1234. This number will appear at the top of each document. Page numbers will be assigned to each page of a case, thus permitting pinpoint citation.
Forum includes the following abbreviations: HC (Hearing Committee); HP (Hearing Panel); SHO (Special Hearing Officer); BBO (Board); SJ (Single Justice); or SJC (full bench decisions).
Date refers the date of the document, in number format.
For cases that have a parallel citation to the Massachusetts Reports, that citation should also be used.
An example of a citation for a Memorandum of Board Decision by the BBO follows:
Matter of Lawyer, 2025-DDC-1111 (BBO 11/01/2025).
To include a pinpoint page citation, the following citation would be used:
Matter of Lawyer, 2025-DDC-1111, at 1 (BBO 11/01/2025).
WE HOPE ALL USERS OF OUR NEW RESEARCH SITE FIND IT HELPFUL.