Las Vegas-based copyright enforcer Righthaven has been losing in court for months, even as opposing lawyers go after its bank accounts, computers, and office chairs. Righthaven lost its own domain name, which was auctioned off last week for $3,300 in order to pay the court judgment against the company. Righthaven even had to submit to a "debtor's exam" on Monday in which opposition lawyers got to go through the company's books and grill company leaders over where all the cash went. Surely, the indignities can't get much worse. Or can they?

Steve Green, a Las Vegas reporter who has covered the entire Righthaven saga in excruciating detail, now notes that three of the company's lawyers, including CEO Steve Gibson, are the subject of a Nevada State Bar investigation. Details of the inquiry aren't public, but judges have been blasting Righthaven's legal team so strongly in court that the move is hardly a surprise.

(One federal judge ruled that "there is a significant amount of evidence that Righthaven made intentional misrepresentations to the Court" and that "this conduct demonstrated Righthaven's bad faith," for instance.)

By the time it's all over, the lawyers who set out to stop "thieves" and save the newspaper business could find themselves sanctioned - or worse. What is it about P2P lawyers that makes them so eminently sanctionable by State Bars and federal judges?