This question comes up pretty infrequently, but it does happen from time to time. The question is: I received a complaint against my professional license. What happens if I just ignore the complaint? That may or may not be a good idea; it really depends on the situation or the licensee.
If the licensee is really just done with their profession and they don’t really want to do anything, then maybe that’s the best course of action. Honestly, I think that it’s probably never a good idea to fully close all options. I’m an “all options on the table” type of person.
I understand some people. They’ve thought about it for a while; they’ve been leaning towards being done with their profession for a year or two, and they truly have thought it all the way through, and they’re truly done. In that particular example, which would be a very small percentage of people that have a complaint filed against them. Then maybe they just ignore it and accept whatever penalty that comes down the way.
But absent having that mindset and thinking about it over an extended period of time, you really want to keep all options open. And to do that, you shouldn’t ignore a complaint. The first thing that you’ve got to do is read over the complaint very carefully. Pay particular attention to any and all deadlines if there are any in the complaint and accompanying documentation from the Board or agency.
Contact an attorney. It doesn’t even have to be from North State Law. Look, we just want whatever’s in a licensee’s best interest. If you end up hiring a different attorney, fine. You just need to talk with at least someone to give you an idea if it’s worth your while to keep going in the complaint process. And it could be a situation where you don’t initially ignore it. You go through the process a little bit, and then hopefully they wouldn’t implement or recommend a stiff penalty. But if they do and you’re just flat out burned out and for a fact that you don’t want to do this or that profession anymore, then maybe you work something out with them at that point. But if you just ignore it, you’re losing that as a potential option. So, it’s not really something that you want to just ignore, with the exception of that very small percentage that I talked about earlier.
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