The First Suspension
John Arthur Leklem is an Orlando attorney. In May 2024, the Florida Supreme Court held him in contempt for failing to comply with the terms of a disciplinary sanction. The sanction order — documented by Floridapolitics.com and the Bar's own public disciplinary record — required him to complete office procedures and record-keeping analysis under the direction of the Bar's Diversion Consultation Service. He did not. The Court suspended him for 90 days, effective 30 days after a November 14, 2025 order — meaning he returned to practice in mid-March 2026.
The Florida Bar's own January 1, 2026 public notice of disciplinary actions confirms the suspension. It lists "John Arthur Leklem, 3507 Neptune Dr., Orlando, suspended for 90 days effective 30 days following a November 14 court order."
That should have been the end of it. It wasn't.
The Second Petition
On June 19, 2026 — three months after his 90-day suspension ended — The Florida Bar filed a new Petition for Contempt and Order to Show Cause against Leklem in the Supreme Court of Florida. The case number is SC2026-0944. The lower tribunal number is 2026-90,040(OSC). The petition commands Leklem to show cause, on or before July 6, 2026, why he should not be held in contempt again — and why he should not be suspended from the practice of law for one full year.
The Ethics Reporter has reviewed the petition text, which was also submitted by two separate, unconnected tipsters to The Ethics Reporter's tip line on July 9, 2026. Both tipsters — one in Winter Park, one elsewhere in Florida — had read prior coverage of Leklem's first contempt and recognized the significance of a second petition landing just weeks after his reinstatement.
The pattern here is not subtle. The Bar asks Leklem to do something. He does not do it. The Court suspends him. He comes back. The Bar asks him again. He does not do it again. The Bar comes back, this time asking for a year.
The Deeper Pattern
Leklem's troubles with The Florida Bar go back further than the 2024 contempt. A November 2023 report by ALABnews documented The Florida Bar's earlier complaint against him for inadequate representation — a complaint that was dismissed on August 4, 2023 as untimely because it was received past the filing deadline. Leklem told investigators he never received the dismissal order because it was mailed to an old address. That is not an exotic excuse. It is the kind of administrative breakdown that keeps showing up in his file: missed deadlines, missed notices, missed compliance, missed responses.
In other words, the 90-day suspension for contempt — the one the Bar has now followed up with a year-long request — did not appear out of nowhere. It sits on top of a trail of similar compliance failures. The Bar's first petition, its first dismissal, its first suspension, and now its second petition all describe the same lawyer and the same problem: when the regulator asks him to comply, he doesn't.
What Makes This Significant
The obvious version of this story — "attorney in trouble again" — is not the most important one. Attorney discipline in Florida, as in every state, is supposed to be proportionate. Minor noncompliance should get minor correction. Harsher sanctions are supposed to track with harsher misconduct.
The Leklem case tests that logic. The Bar is asking for a year-long suspension for the same general category of offense that got him ninety days in 2024. If the Court grants it, it will signal that the Bar views repeat refusal to comply with sanction orders as more serious than the underlying misconduct that produced the sanction orders in the first place. That has implications for every Florida attorney who has ever sat on a compliance order and thought, "I'll get to it."
It also raises the harder question nobody at the Bar wants to answer out loud: if a 90-day suspension did not get John Arthur Leklem's attention, why should the Court believe a year will? Suspension in most states is not a punitive tool; it is a protective one. It exists to keep the public safe while an attorney demonstrates they can be trusted to follow the rules. At some point, when an attorney has shown repeatedly that they will not follow the rules, the protective function runs out of escalating options. There is disbarment after that, and not much else.
The Bar has not yet asked for that. It is asking for a year. The Supreme Court has not yet decided. The show-cause deadline passed on July 6, 2026; the Bar's reply was due July 16, 2026. The matter is now before the Court.
A Note on Sources
This article is based on The Florida Bar's public disciplinary notices (January 1, 2026), Floridapolitics.com's reporting on Florida Supreme Court attorney discipline (January 5, 2026), the text of The Florida Bar's Petition for Contempt and Order to Show Cause in SC2026-0944 / 2026-90,040(OSC), prior ALABnews reporting on The Florida Bar's earlier complaint against Leklem (November 2023), and two independent tip submissions to The Ethics Reporter. Leklem has not responded to requests for comment. The Ethics Reporter will update this story when the Florida Supreme Court acts on the pending petition.
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