SALEM — A North Shore lawyer who once served on the board of Salem Main Streets has been disbarred for stealing client funds and then failing to cooperate with state bar officials investigating the complaint.
Daniel S. Boyce of Melrose, who ran a firm called North Shore Legal Associates in Salem, was ordered to shut down his law practice last month by the Supreme Judicial Court.
According to the order, issued by Justice Margot Botsford, Boyce's firm was hired to handle a real estate transaction in 2004. Part of the firm's role was to make mortgage payments on the property using client funds until the closing.
After the sale, the mortgage company was owed $224,900. Boyce and another lawyer in the firm cut a check to pay off the mortgage from the client funds account, but that check bounced.
Eventually, Boyce's partner paid the mortgage company what was left in the client funds account, $112,100, and the client was forced to cover the rest of the cost.
Investigators learned that Boyce and his partner had misused $66,200 of the client funds, and that Boyce had taken at least $27,300 of that amount, writing checks, some of them payable to himself and some payable to "cash."
"In addition, the committee found that the respondent (Boyce) had intentionally misrepresented to bar counsel facts concerning the payoff check ... and had failed to cooperate with bar counsel's investigation," Botsford wrote.
Boyce argued that he was in economic distress and claimed that his partner was responsible for the business end of the practice.
But officials concluded that they could not accept that excuse, noting that all lawyers have ethical obligations to their clients, and that Boyce, who had been practicing law since 2002, had a background in business "that should have made him aware of fiduciary duties owed in connection with funds held for others."
Back in 2004, while he was a co-vice-president of the Salem Main Streets board, Boyce ran a seminar for business owners on the legal issues involved in owning a business.
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