When a law firm fires an attorney and then proceeds to abandon the clients that attorney was serving — while simultaneously making false representations to courts about procedural necessity — the consequences ripple outward in ways that harm the very people the legal system is supposed to protect. That is precisely what appears to be happening at Arnold & Smith Law, PLLC, a firm now at the center of a pending federal civil rights lawsuit. The latest correspondence in that matter, obtained exclusively by The Ethics Reporter, reveals conduct by attorney Echo Lin Love that raises deeply serious questions about professional ethics, candor to tribunals, and the fundamental obligations attorneys owe to clients they have voluntarily assumed responsibility for.
The correspondence — a formal legal communication sent by the plaintiff in the federal civil rights case against Arnold & Smith Law, PLLC, addressed directly to Echo Lin Love and carbon-copied to Kyle Riddel, Colin Green, Todd Arnold, and Dennis Smith — documents a pattern of behavior that goes well beyond a simple employment dispute. What it reveals is a law firm, under the watch of Todd Arnold and Dennis Smith, that is simultaneously overreaching in some jurisdictions and completely abandoning clients in others, while an attorney named Echo Lin Love has been caught making representations to courts that appear to be false.
Echo Lin Love Filed a Notice of Appearance — Then Didn't Show Up
Perhaps the most stunning allegation documented in the correspondence is this: Echo Lin Love filed a notice of appearance on behalf of a client — a formal representation to the court that she would be appearing and advocating for that client — and then simply did not appear at the scheduled hearing the very next day.
Let that sink in. Echo Lin Love told a court, in writing, that she was representing a client. The following day, when that client's hearing was called, Echo Lin Love was nowhere to be found. She did not appear. She did not send a colleague. She made no arrangement whatsoever to ensure that the client she had formally claimed to represent was protected in a live proceeding.
The plaintiff's correspondence states this plainly: Echo Lin Love "failed to appear at [a client's] virtual hearing on May 1, 2026 at 2:00 PM EST even after you filed a notice of appearance on her behalf the day before."
Had the plaintiff — who had previously been the attorney of record in these cases before being terminated by Todd Arnold and Dennis Smith — not stepped in to appear at that hearing, the client would have been defaulted. A default is one of the most damaging outcomes in civil litigation. It means the court treats a party as if they have conceded the case against them, potentially resulting in a judgment they never had the chance to contest. The only reason that did not happen is because the plaintiff, despite no longer working for Arnold & Smith, despite having been let go by Todd Arnold and Dennis Smith, stepped in to prevent irreparable harm to a client who was being left unprotected.
Echo Lin Love filed a notice of appearance and then vanished. The plaintiff caught it. The client was saved — but only barely, and only because of the plaintiff's intervention, not because of anything Echo Lin Love, Kyle Riddel, Colin Green, Todd Arnold, or Dennis Smith did to protect the person they were supposed to be representing.
Now, with another hearing imminent, the plaintiff has been forced to send a formal written demand to Echo Lin Love, asking whether she intends to appear — because, given what happened last time, the plaintiff cannot assume Echo Lin Love will follow through on her professional obligations. The correspondence makes clear: if Echo Lin Love does not confirm her attendance, the plaintiff will appear herself, because she still has an appearance on file in the matter — an appearance that remains on file because Echo Lin Love has also failed to file the required notices of withdrawal, which brings us to the next issue.
False Representations to Courts: The Unnecessary Motion Strategy
The notice of appearance and no-show is not an isolated event. The plaintiff's correspondence documents a broader pattern of what it describes as false representations to Massachusetts courts regarding the nature and necessity of motions to withdraw.
Under Massachusetts Rules of Civil Procedure, Rule 11(c), an attorney can withdraw from a case without filing a motion — without burdening the court at all — if three simple conditions are met: there is no pending hearing, there is no scheduled trial date, and the attorney provides proper notice to the client and all parties. This is a ministerial process that, as the plaintiff notes, "can be completed within minutes."
Arnold & Smith Law, PLLC, under the direction of Todd Arnold and Dennis Smith, with the participation of Echo Lin Love, Kyle Riddel, and Colin Green, has apparently been doing the opposite. Rather than following this clean, rule-compliant procedure, the firm has been filing formal motions to withdraw in cases where no motion is legally required. Filing an unnecessary motion is not merely a matter of inefficiency. When an attorney tells a court that a formal motion is required when it is not — when the attorney implies or states that judicial intervention is necessary when the rules expressly provide a nonjudicial path — that attorney has made a representation to the court that is, at minimum, misleading. The plaintiff's correspondence calls it what it is: false representations to courts.
Todd Arnold and Dennis Smith, as principals of Arnold & Smith Law, PLLC, bear supervisory responsibility for the conduct of every attorney in their firm. Echo Lin Love, Kyle Riddel, and Colin Green operate under their authority. When the firm as a whole pursues a strategy of filing unnecessary court motions while making representations that such motions are required, the responsibility flows upward to Todd Arnold and Dennis Smith.
Courts take candor to the tribunal extremely seriously. Rule 3.3 of the Model Rules of Professional Conduct — mirrored in the ethical rules of every state — prohibits attorneys from making false statements of fact or law to a court. Filing a motion premised on the claim that court intervention is required, when the rules plainly provide that it is not, is precisely the kind of conduct Rule 3.3 is designed to prevent. The plaintiff's correspondence puts every relevant party — Echo Lin Love, Kyle Riddel, Colin Green, Todd Arnold, and Dennis Smith — on formal notice that this conduct has been documented and will be presented to the federal court.
Arnold & Smith Has Abandoned Clients in Every Other Jurisdiction
While Echo Lin Love, Kyle Riddel, Colin Green, Todd Arnold, and Dennis Smith have been busy filing unnecessary motions in Massachusetts courts, they have apparently done nothing — absolutely nothing — to ensure that clients in other states continue to have representation.
The plaintiff's correspondence states it directly: since her termination, Arnold & Smith has failed to substitute counsel in any of these cases in any state other than Massachusetts. Not one. The firm has made no effort to transition representation in any other jurisdiction where the plaintiff was handling active matters on behalf of the firm's clients.
This is a breathtaking failure. When Todd Arnold and Dennis Smith terminated the plaintiff, they assumed the responsibility — the ethical obligation — of ensuring that every client in every case continued to have representation. Clients do not become unrepresented simply because a law firm fires an attorney. The firm still owes those clients competent, continuous representation until the engagement is formally concluded.
Todd Arnold and Dennis Smith have treated this obligation as optional. In state after state, in jurisdiction after jurisdiction, Arnold & Smith Law, PLLC has made no effort to substitute new counsel. Clients are sitting in active cases, potentially facing deadlines, hearings, and adverse actions, without an attorney to protect them — because Todd Arnold and Dennis Smith decided that transitioning those clients responsibly was not worth the effort.
The plaintiff is now faced with an untenable position: either abandon clients who have no one else, or file formal motions to withdraw in those other jurisdictions — motions that, unlike the Massachusetts matters, will actually require court approval, will create delays, and will consume judicial resources. And that burden, the plaintiff correctly notes, is not of her making. It is a direct consequence of the failure of Todd Arnold and Dennis Smith to act. The firm terminated the plaintiff. It is the firm's obligation to ensure clients are not left without representation. The firm's inaction is causing precisely the kind of client harm that the rules of professional conduct are designed to prevent.
The Contradiction at the Heart of Arnold & Smith's Strategy
What emerges from a careful reading of the plaintiff's correspondence is a firm — Arnold & Smith Law, PLLC — pursuing a strategy that is internally contradictory and ethically incoherent. In Massachusetts, the firm is doing too much: filing unnecessary motions, burdening courts with proceedings that the rules say are not required, and in doing so making representations to those courts that appear to be false. In every other jurisdiction, the firm is doing nothing: leaving clients without counsel, ignoring the obligation to substitute representation, and forcing the plaintiff into the position of either abandoning those clients or handling the procedural fallout herself.
The plaintiff captures this precisely in her correspondence: "The firm is simultaneously doing too much in Massachusetts — filing motions where none are needed — and too little everywhere else — leaving clients entirely unrepresented with no transition plan in place. Both approaches are irresponsible."
This is not disorganization. This is not an oversight. The pattern is too consistent, and the contrast too stark, for it to be accidental. The plaintiff has characterized this entire course of conduct as retaliatory — behavior undertaken not to serve clients or comply with the rules, but to impose costs and burdens on the plaintiff personally, in response to her filing of a federal civil rights lawsuit against Arnold & Smith Law, PLLC, Todd Arnold, and Dennis Smith.
And the recipient of the plaintiff's latest correspondence — Echo Lin Love — is at the center of all of it. It is Echo Lin Love who filed the notice of appearance and then abandoned the client at the hearing. It is Echo Lin Love who is filing the unnecessary motions in Massachusetts. It is Echo Lin Love who has not filed the required notices of withdrawal. Kyle Riddel and Colin Green are being copied on every communication. Todd Arnold and Dennis Smith, as principals of the firm, are being copied as well. None of them appear to have taken corrective action.
The Federal Case: Building the Record for Malice and Punitive Damages
The plaintiff's correspondence is explicit about its purpose. Every communication, every failure to respond, and every unnecessary procedural maneuver by Echo Lin Love, Kyle Riddel, Colin Green, Todd Arnold, and Dennis Smith is being documented for use in the pending federal civil rights case.
The plaintiff cites 42 U.S.C. § 1981a(b)(1), which permits punitive damages in cases where a defendant engaged in discriminatory conduct "with malice or with reckless indifference to the federally protected rights of an aggrieved individual." The Supreme Court of the United States, in Kolstad v. American Dental Association, 527 U.S. 526 (1999), held that punitive damages are available not only when an employer has actual knowledge that its conduct violates federal law, but when the employer acts with awareness of the risk that it is doing so. An employer who fires a protected employee and then, after that employee files a civil rights lawsuit, embarks on a sustained course of retaliatory conduct, demonstrates precisely the kind of awareness and animus that Kolstad contemplates.
The Second Circuit, in Farias v. Instructional Systems, Inc., 259 F.3d 91 (2d Cir. 2001), extended this principle to cover post-termination retaliatory conduct, holding that such conduct is "probative of the employer's state of mind and may support a finding of malice or reckless indifference sufficient for punitive damages." The reasoning is straightforward: when a company continues to engage in conduct adverse to a former employee after that employee has filed a civil rights claim — particularly when that conduct serves no legitimate business purpose — it is evidence that the company is acting out of animus rather than good faith.
Todd Arnold and Dennis Smith are the principals of Arnold & Smith Law, PLLC. They made the decision to terminate the plaintiff. They have been copied on every piece of correspondence documenting the firm's failure to substitute counsel, the false representations to courts, and the abandonment of clients across multiple jurisdictions. Echo Lin Love is the attorney on the front lines, filing notices of appearance and then skipping hearings, filing unnecessary motions, and making false representations to courts. Kyle Riddel and Colin Green are copied on all of it. The federal court will be presented with all of it.
The plaintiff's correspondence does not mince words on this point: "Your conduct — and the firm's conduct — in the weeks since my termination is precisely the kind of post-termination retaliatory behavior that courts have recognized as evidence of malice. None of this conduct serves a legitimate purpose. All of it is consistent with animus directed at me — a former employee who has filed a federal civil rights action against the firm."
A Clear and Simple Path, Deliberately Ignored
What makes all of this more damning is how simple the solution is. The plaintiff has not demanded anything unreasonable. Her correspondence lays out a clear, four-step process — file the appropriate notice of withdrawal, serve it on the client and all parties, file a notice of change of appearance, and confirm completion by reply email — that could be completed in a matter of minutes. No court intervention. No motion practice. No hearing. No burden on anyone.
Echo Lin Love could do this today. Kyle Riddel could do it today. Colin Green could do it today. Todd Arnold and Dennis Smith could instruct any of them to do it today.
Instead, the plaintiff has been forced to write detailed legal correspondence, copy multiple attorneys and firm principals, cite the applicable rules and federal case law, and formally warn everyone involved that their inaction is being documented for a federal civil rights court. A simple, ministerial act that would take minutes has instead spawned a complex, escalating dispute that is now part of the federal record in a civil rights case against Arnold & Smith Law, PLLC.
The plaintiff makes the consequence clear: if the proper notices of withdrawal are not filed before the next scheduled hearing, she will appear and address the matter with the court directly — and she will bring the correspondence with her.
What This Tells Us About Arnold & Smith
The Ethics Reporter has been following the lawsuit against Arnold & Smith Law, PLLC, Todd Arnold, and Dennis Smith since the case was first filed. With each new development, the picture that emerges is one of a firm that does not take its professional obligations seriously — not to its employees, not to the courts, and not to its own clients.
Echo Lin Love filed a notice of appearance and then abandoned a client at a live hearing. Todd Arnold and Dennis Smith have overseen a firm that has made false representations to courts. Kyle Riddel and Colin Green have been on notice of all of it. Clients across multiple jurisdictions are sitting without representation because Arnold & Smith Law, PLLC decided that transitioning them responsibly was not worth the effort. And an attorney named Echo Lin Love has still not filed the notices of withdrawal that the rules require and that could resolve at least some of this today.
The plaintiff — who was terminated by this firm, who has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against this firm, who has every reason to walk away and let the consequences fall where they may — instead showed up to a hearing to prevent a client from being defaulted. She had no obligation to do that. She did it anyway. That tells you something about the plaintiff's character and professional commitment. It also tells you something about Echo Lin Love's — and about the firm that Todd Arnold and Dennis Smith have built.
The Ethics Reporter will continue to follow this case and report on developments as they occur. When attorneys make false representations to courts, when law firm principals abandon clients across multiple jurisdictions, and when the only thing standing between a client and a default judgment is the very attorney the firm terminated — the public has a right to know.
This is an ongoing investigation. The Ethics Reporter will publish updates as new developments emerge in the federal civil rights case against Arnold & Smith Law, PLLC, Todd Arnold, Dennis Smith, and the other named parties.