By any objective measure, Michael H. Sneed is a bad lawyer. According to court documents and testimonials from those who have crossed paths with Sneed, he takes cash from clients and then doesn’t return their phone calls. He neglects to file paperwork, resulting in penalties against the very people he represents. He accepts money for cases he isn’t qualified to handle. Once, he didn't show up for a deposition that had been scheduled weeks in advance.

What’s more, when clients call to complain or just find out how their cases are going, he sometimes doesn’t answer the phone. Or respond to their letters. Even the Tennessee Board of Professional Responsibility, the agency that polices the conduct of attorneys, had to send two or three missives by certified mail before they could get a response from Sneed to recent complaints against him.

And it’s not the first time that the board has heard complaints against Sneed. Since 1993, he’s been censured four times and suspended once. Right now, there is a petition before the board to impose yet another disciplinary action against him. For a little perspective, consider that, of almost 4,000 attorneys practicing law in Davidson County in 2005, only 9 were censured and 3 were suspended. Courts have punished him for malfeasance too. Last September, he lost a malpractice suit brought by a former client. The episode may end up costing him more than $24,000.

If you’re reading this newspaper, though, there’s a good chance that you’ll never have to worry about Michael Sneed representing (or should we say misrepresenting?) you. That’s because many of his clients don’t speak English and aren’t U.S. citizens. They have no recourse when Sneed botches their cases and, because many are recommended to him by someone they trust, they often don’t realize that they’re in trouble until it’s too late.

That trusted someone is Carmen Ceja, who runs Ceja Enterprises Inc., a business where Sneed currently maintains an office.

Ceja claims she is a notario and is qualified to handle legal and financial matters that, in fact, she is not licensed to touch. For a number of years, she teamed up with Sneed and, last March, three former clients who felt that they’d been ripped off brought a lawsuit against the pair.

In many Latin American countries, a notario is a kind of super lawyer. They have authority to issue judicial opinions, mediate disputes, make binding judgments and perform legal marriages. In a metropolis the size of Mexico City, there might be only two dozen notarios. In some countries, it is impossible to buy property without a notario’s help.

The notario has no equivalent in the U.S., and there is no adequate translation of the word in English. Legally, Carmen Ceja is a notary, meaning that she can administer oaths and stamp your driver’s license application. That’s it. But to someone who’s just landed in the U.S. and speaks little English, this linguistic sleight of hand is the key to creating the perception that Carmen Ceja is licensed and capable enough to handle just about any legal or financial problem. For a fee, she proffers less than expert advice on everything from immigration to divorce proceedings and has left more than a few clients with lighter wallets and legal headaches.

Last year, the IRS Criminal Investigation Unit raided Ceja Enterprises and removed boxes of files. Although IRS spokeswoman Jennifer Pollard won’t comment on the raid specifically, she does say that the CIU is responsible for investigating violations of Internal Revenue laws, including tax evasion and assisting in the preparation of false tax returns. The U.S. Department of Justice sent Ceja a certified letter the following month ordering her immediately to stop marketing her company as authorized to handle immigration work.

But still Ceja wanted to do more for her community. Enter Michael Sneed.

For years, Ceja has been hunting for lawyers, trying to get them to collaborate with her so that she could expand her business beyond document filing and into the courtroom.

Vanessa Saenz, a local immigration attorney, says that Ceja approached her a few years ago at a Hispanic Chamber of Commerce event and asked if she’d like to come help some of Ceja Enterprises’ clients. Saenz declined. “I’m familiar with what notarios do,” she says. “I said, ‘I’ll call you back.’ I never did.”

But with Sneed, Ceja found a willing partner. Sneed set up an office at Ceja Enterprises so that the Ceja clients who needed legal representation before a court could easily be referred to him. Sabrina Jacal says that she worked as a paralegal at Ceja Enterprises from 2001 to 2003.

“Carmen would call [Sneed] and he would come in and take fees from the clients,” she says. “Then, six months later, the [documents] would never have been filed. I would call the clerk’s office to investigate and find out that he just wasn’t doing it.”

Jacal says that she confronted her boss about it, but Ceja did nothing. “I refused to work with Mike Sneed. He’d take the money and not do the job,” Jacal says. “But Carmen, for whatever reason, continued to work with him.”

Sneed calls this allegation a “bold-faced lie.” He also denies that he has a partnership with Ceja. It’s just two people sharing office space, in a similar line of work, seeing the same clients.

Whatever you call their relationship, it spells trouble for some of the most vulnerable members of Nashville’s Latino community, among them a woman named Margarita Kennen-Sanchez, one of the plaintiffs in the case against Sneed.

Kennen-Sanchez was a battered spouse whose legal status was tied to her marriage. She speaks no English. There is a clause in U.S. immigration law that allows non-citizen victims of domestic violence to stay here legally, even after divorcing their citizen spouses. She went to Ceja, who gave her the necessary forms and referred her to Sneed for legal consultation.

According to both the original filing of the lawsuit and Sneed’s most recent disciplinary petition from the state Board of Professional Responsibility, Sneed told Kennen-Sanchez that hers would be “an easy case” and charged her $1,500 to appear at an interview with immigration officials. According to the original filing of the lawsuit, Sneed showed up an hour and 20 minutes late. The interview was terminated shortly thereafter because he “didn’t know the law applicable to [Kennen-Sanchez’s case].”

As a result, Kennen-Sanchez’s status is now in limbo. She’s afraid to go back to her native Mexico to visit her children because she doesn’t think that the U.S. authorities will let her enter this country upon her return. This is the same reason that she could not attend her brother’s funeral after his death last summer. She has since withdrawn her name from the lawsuit, and her attorney won’t say why. Sneed denies the claims that Kennen-Sanchez makes against him, saying, “Those allegations are untrue; that case was dismissed.”

At best, he’s only half right. The case against Ceja and Sneed has most definitely not been dismissed, and the other two plaintiffs are still listed on the lawsuit.

According to the recent petition for disciplinary action, Sneed is breaking the law by accepting referrals from a non-attorney (Ceja) and paying Ceja for those referrals.

Ceja’s attorney says Sneed is simply willing to take difficult cases other attorneys won’t.

And in a letter that Sneed wrote to the Board of Professional Responsibility responding to the above-mentioned petition, he said that Kennen-Sanchez misled him about the facts of her case and that she ignored his advice. As to the novel profit-sharing plan that he and Ceja had worked out, Sneed wrote, “Obviously, certain immigration attorneys are jealous of the work which Carmen Ceja performs and have launched a champaign (sic) in order to prevent me from continuing my relationship with Ms. Ceja.” Sneed’s professional relationships aside, even a brief look at his recent career reveals an attitude toward clients and their cases that combines deceit with either repeated memory loss or outright laziness.

Take, for example, Michael Austin. Back in 1999, a gang of plainclothes cops  caused permanent injury to his back when they mistakenly arrested him. He wanted to sue Metro Government for the cost of physical rehabilitation. His mistake was hiring Michael Sneed.

Sneed told Austin that he had experience with such cases, even though, according to the lawsuit that Austin filed against Sneed last year, “he had never handled such a case.”

When Metro lawyers asked for basic pre-trial information, Sneed didn’t respond and the deadline for doing so passed. As a result, Austin’s suit against Metro was thrown out. Austin sued Sneed for malpractice. Austin’s attorney, Larry Crain, says that Sneed’s behavior throughout the trial was strange. “He failed to show up for a deposition,” Crain says. “He called two hours before and gave some kind of excuse about a scheduling conflict.” The gaffe would end up costing Sneed over $700.

Sneed admits that he made an error by not filing one of the forms on time, but says that in a case like that, there are many documents that need to be filed, and he filed all the others “in a timely manner.”

He also admits that he can be tough to reach. “In the course of your day, I bet that you don’t return every single phone call that you get,” he says when asked about his aloofness toward clients. Yeah, but not returning repeated calls over a period of months? “I have a big practice with many clients.”

In the end, a judge awarded Austin over $24,000 of Sneed’s money. He has yet to receive a dime because Sneed has given notice that he wants to appeal the decision.

Even in his own defense, however, Sneed is not exactly Cochran-esque. Crain says that Sneed has yet to file the proper appeal documents, and the court of appeals has given notice that if he does not do so soon, his appeal will be dismissed. “It’s one appeal we’re not too worried about,” Crain says.