Lafayette mayor has practiced law, likely even from rehab. Failed to disclose new practice

Lafayette Mayor-President Josh Guillory has been practicing law while in office, even likely during his three-week rehab program, and he has failed to disclose a second law firm to the state Ethics Administration.

Guillory announced on Monday, July 25, that he had entered a 21-day, in-patient rehab program over the weekend for untreated post-traumatic stress disorder and alcohol use. He clarified last week that he actually entered rehab on Thursday, July 21, and returned to Lafayette on Aug. 11.

The first-term mayor-president insisted on retaining control over Lafayette Consolidated Government in his extended absence, prompting a local leadership crisis during his first week in rehab.

But government work was not all that Guillory insisted on doing while seeking treatment for his mental health conditions, as records show he filed suit on Aug. 11 -- the day he said he returned from rehab -- to expunge a client’s 2014 arrest by Broussard police for marijuana possession, the Current first reported Wednesday.

The revelation comes alongside news that Guillory has been teaching at UL since August 2020, got a license to sell title insurance in September 2020, and launched an equipment rental company with his wife last year, illustrating numerous paths to bolster the mayor-president's income.

The first-term mayor-president was under pressure to close his law practice after winning the election in November 2019, since Lafayette's Home Rule Charter prohibits mayor-presidents from "any activity unrelated to (local government) business that would interfere with or detract from the performance of duties.”

Instead, he launched a new firm, Acadiana Family Law, shortly after winning and moved the location of his old firm, The Law Office of Joshua S. Guillory, to a different office.

Guillory filed the recent expungement case on Aug. 11 using the phone number and address of City-Parish Attorney Greg Logan’s law firm.

He included an Aug. 10 letter and an Aug. 9 form from 15th Judicial District Attorney Don Landry certifying the possession charges were dropped in 2015 and incorrectly confirming the client had no pending felony charges.

But Guillory’s client is currently in a pre-trial diversion program for felony drug possession charges filed in March, which would likely make the client ineligible for expungement of the 2014 arrest.

Landry told the Daily Advertiser that the issue on the form was likely a clerical mistake, and that the client would likely be eligible for expungement once the pre-trial diversion is successfully completed.

On Friday, Aug. 19, Guillory filed a motion to delay the expungement and withdraw from the case.

He included a letter to the client saying he could not represent her because her March arrest was conducted by the Lafayette Police Department, creating a potential conflict of interest for the mayor-president, and refunding her a redacted amount of money.

It is not clear how many expungements Guillory has worked on since taking office because those records are removed from public view once a judge approves the expungement.

But the recent case is not the only time since taking office that Guillory has worked as an attorney for clients in Lafayette Parish.

In October 2020, he took on a succession case for a client, using the same post office box and phone number that he and his wife used to create their recently-revealed equipment rental company in August 2021.

Before that, Guillory took on another expungement in February 2020, shortly after taking office.

In that expungement, records show Guillory was in court on May 20, 2020, days after the Lafayette Parish Courthouse reopened during the first COVID-19 wave, to argue for expungement of a different client’s 2016 conviction on two counts of aggravated assault with a firearm.

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Asked about his expungement work Thursday during his weekly call-in radio show on KPEL, Guillory said it was a way to supplement his income as mayor-president that he felt no need to make apologies for.

“While I'm thankful for the salary that we have, we did take a pretty significant pay cut. That doesn't mean that I'm not grateful for what I have, but I do try to supplement it every once a while. But I do nothing to take away from my duties as mayor-president,” he said.

“It's something I'm passionate about, and I can provide a little more for my family,” he added. “I don't apologize for it.”

Since announcing his rung for mayor-president in 2019, Guillory's willingness to stop practicing law while in office has been a central question.

The issue was raised in the final debate leading up to the runoff election when Guillory acknowledged that he would "have to close down my practice, the brick-and-mortar practice."

“I will do my very best to close out my cases before I’m sworn in. In all reality, it’s probably not going to happen,” he said in the Nov. 13, 2019 debate.

But a month later in December 2019, he launched a new company — Acadiana Family Law — saying he wouldn’t be working there as an attorney while serving as mayor-president but would oversee cases handled by another lawyer.

He later said he had received legal opinions that cleared him to own the new practice while serving as mayor-president, but those have not been publicly produced.

KATC later reported that he quietly closed both law firms, and Guillory informed the court in Lafayette on Feb. 13, 2020, that he had “closed the physical location of (his) law firm” and provided a new address for a nearby building owned by Logan’s brother.

But filings made with Louisiana’s Secretary of State show that both firms have been kept active in the years since he took office, with Guillory at the helm.

Failed to report new law firm

While Guillory has followed Secretary of State requirements for both firms, the same is not true for his required annual financial disclosures to the Louisiana Ethics Administration.

Since founding Acadiana Family Law LLC in December 2019, Guillory has never reported his ownership of the firm to the Ethics Administration.

For public offices like Guillory’s, officials are required to list any businesses they and their spouse own a combined 10% or more of, as well as any income they receive from those businesses, on their annual financial disclosures.

Guillory did that in 2019 and 2020 for his original law office and his wife’s counseling company, reporting a combined income of between $5,000 and $24,999 from those two operations in 2020.

He also updated his 2020 financial disclosure in June to include details about his income from teaching at UL, where he has made $15,800 since August 2020 for typically teaching one business law class per semester, despite almost exclusively handling criminal defense and family law in his private practice.

But his failure to do so with Acadiana Family Law in three ethics disclosures, despite maintaining its corporate filings, raises questions of whether he has been using the firm to practice law while in office and whether it has been a source of income for him.

The Daily Advertiser initially reached out to Lafayette Consolidated Government spokesperson Jamie Angelle for comment on July 22. Angelle declined to comment Friday, Aug. 19, and denied a request for an interview with Guillory.

Follow Andrew Capps on Twitter or send an email to acapps@theadvertiser.com.

This article originally appeared on Lafayette Daily Advertiser: Lafayette mayor has been practicing law, failed to report new law firm