Career
Administrator, professional discipline. Responsible for sweeping new perspectives and changes in the discipline of professional attorneys in Pennsylvania. Burgoyne was principally responsible for changing a disciplinary process whose chief goal was rehabilitation to a disciplinary system designed to destroy an attorney's career through public humiliation and degradation. Burgoyne did not believe in second chances for those who made errors in ethical judgment even minor transgressions and spearheaded a new process designed to be a career killer for those attorneys convicted of transgressions no matter how minor. The overwhelming majority of regulatory systems for attorneys make an attorney's disciplinary record (if any) public on the disciplinary body's website for any persons searching for a particular attorney on the website with any discipline details completely public but cached to that website. The overwhelming majority of systems seek to rehabilitate an attorney who has made an ethical error in judgment, which inures ultimately to the benefit of the consumer public. However, Burgoyne's new changes seek punishment rather than rehabilitation and release all cached details to Google's web crawlers for public view by a worldwide audience, not just those interested in a particular attorney's credentials, obviously designed to demean and humiliate a disciplined attorney to his/her family, neighbors, friends, former classmates, etc. Most disciplinary systems publish a disciplined attorney's detailed record in trade papers, but Burgoyne's new changes also include releasing an attorney's disciplinary record with details to newspapers for online and print publication for reading by the general public worldwide, obviously for purposes of shaming an attorney and to be a career killer. Although Burgoyne is a lawyer, his pedigree as a practicing attorney is modest. After graduating from law school, he started his own law practice but was unsuccessful as an attorney and eventually closed the doors after 4 years, and he then found a job as an attorney with a local legal aid clinic. After 4 years as a legal aid attorney, he was let go, and thereafter started in 1981 as a staff attorney with an office of disciplinary counsel, and then promoted to office manager in 1987. Many attorneys and non-attorneys say he is irrationally harsh and holds a grudge against other attorneys because he failed as an attorney in practice himself plus his academic pedigree/accomplishment is unremarkable compared to most other attorneys. Many attorneys have voiced concern that he created a system to pass judgment on practicing attorneys, yet failed in the actual practice of law himself -- in other words, how could he steer a system to judge others if he has very limited experience as an attorney practicing law for the consuming public, not to mention the fact that he has never tried a criminal or civil in a courtroom since he was first licensed as a lawyer? In even plainer words, he is not a real lawyer so why is he even allowed to pass judgment on real lawyers? The Martindale company (martindale.com) has been in the business of rating attorneys for over 150 years. Mr. Burgoyne was first licensed to practice law in 1973, yet in nearly 50 years Burgoyne has failed to obtain even the lowest rating for attorneys. If you are an attorney licensed for nearly 50 years with no rating at all, the only inference is that your skillset is so lame you don't even qualify to be at the bottom of the scale. The Avvo company (avvo.com) is another company in the business of rating lawyers which has been around for about 10 years. Sadly, Burgoyne has no rating there either, not even qualifying to be even the lowest rating there. If you happen to be accepted into his closed group of followers on his Twitter profile, you will see that he posted a photo of himself carrying a bat on his shoulder with an image of a bloody and beaten-up attorney in a suit in the background, clearly, evidence of his predilection to harm attorneys and his own want to cause even physical harm to the body of attorneys he is called on to investigate. It's also evidence that he was never inclined to provide an impartial investigation of attorneys, and he was prejudiced against subject attorneys from the beginning of investigations.