News Releases

State Bar Board of Trustees Announces Departure of Leah Wilson, Executive Director

Wilson decides to step away effective January 17, 2020

Leah T. Wilson has announced her decision to leave the role of Executive Director effective January 17, 2020, to pursue other career interests. Chief of Programs Donna Hershkowitz has been named Interim Executive Director. At the request of Board of Trustees leadership, Wilson has agreed to support the transition in a consulting capacity.

 “Leah has been a standout leader of the State Bar, and we are sorry to see her go," said Alan Steinbrecher, chair of the Board of Trustees. "She has ably led the agency through an unprecedented period of restructuring and reform. We are immensely grateful for all that she has helped the Board accomplish, and for her unquestionable talent as an innovative and transformative leader. She will be greatly missed, but she will leave the organization much better situated to address the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead. With Donna’s depth and breadth of experience at the State Bar, and proven skills as a leader and administrator, she is well-poised to ensure that the agency continues its progress."

"It has been a great honor to lead the State Bar, and I am proud of all that we—Board and staff—have accomplished,” Wilson said. “We have made concrete, measurable progress on many strategic initiatives supporting our mission of public protection, furthering access to legal services, and promoting diversity and inclusion in the profession. A renewed emphasis on metrics and data has strengthened both the agency’s accountability and its ability to address dynamic changes in the profession. I have cherished the responsibility of spearheading this dynamic transformation, but this year marks two decades in my public service career, and I am ready for a new chapter in my professional life."

The executive director leads the senior management team responsible for the numerous programs of the State Bar. Wilson has served as executive director since September 2017. Working closely with the Board of Trustees, Wilson led the agency through significant governance and structural reforms aimed at greater accountability, transparency, effectiveness, and strategic focus. Among those reforms:

• Financial, operational, and programmatic improvements leading to the agency receiving legislative approval for the first increase in its licensing fees in over 20 years. The fee increase will enable important investments in the discipline system and State Bar staff, providing the latter with a retiree health benefit for the first time in the State Bar’s history.
• Implementing the separation of the organization's associational functions, directed by the Legislature after decades of discussion on the topic. This structural change, effective January 1, 2018, has enabled the State Bar to sharpen its focus as a regulatory agency whose mission is public protection.
• Streamlining and alignment of the board's numerous committees, commissions, and task forces for greater effectiveness and improved governance.
• Completing several first-ever comprehensive studies that have created storehouses of data on which to base policy decisions: on the California Bar Exam, on the demographics and career trajectories of California's attorney population, on the California Justice Gap, and on racial disparities in the discipline process.
• Implementing significant infrastructure improvements to enhance the agency’s efficiency and better serve the State Bar's various constituencies, including major new systems implementations for case management, online billing, admissions, and internal financial and human resources functions.

Wilson joined the State Bar in 2015 as its first chief operations officer, part of a new management team charged with transformational reform of the agency after a period of significant upheaval and controversy.

Hershkowitz joined the State Bar in 2016 as Assistant Chief Trial Counsel, following many years in leadership positions at the Judicial Council of California, during which she served on—and eventually co-chaired— the State Bar’s Legal Services Trust Fund Commission. She was promoted to the State Bar leadership team in 2017, first as Chief of Mission Advancement and Accountability, and in early 2018 was appointed to her current role, which oversees the offices of Access & Inclusion, Admissions, Attorney Regulation, Professional Competence, and Professional Support & Client Protection. A graduate of UCLA Law School, Hershkowitz was first admitted to the State Bar in 1994.

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The State Bar of California's mission is to protect the public and includes the primary functions of licensing, regulation and discipline of attorneys; the advancement of the ethical and competent practice of law; and support of efforts for greater access to, and inclusion in, the legal system.