News Releases

The California Supreme Court announced today that it approved the State Bar’s proposal for the provisional licensure of 2020 law school graduates. New Rule of Court 9.49 will be effective November 17, 2020, and the State Bar is slated to begin accepting applications on that day.

Today Associate Justice Joshua P. Groban of the California Supreme Court swore in Sean SeLegue as Chair of the State Bar Board Board of Trustees and Ruben Duran as Vice-Chair at the Board’s first meeting of the 2020-2021 Board year. Also sworn in was attorney Christine Gonong, appointed by the Court to a four-year term as a new Trustee, and attorney Hailyn Chen, reappointed by the Court for a second four-year term. New Trustee Arnie Sowell Jr., executive director of NextGen Policy, who was appointed by the Senate Rules Committee, was also sworn in by Justice Groban. 

The State Bar has launched an innovative digital annual report spotlighting the agency’s accomplishments and progress in 2019, a pivotal year that featured measurable progress in meeting its expansive mission of public protection.

A State Bar Board of Trustees Zoom meeting on Friday, September 4, 2020, was disrupted when an individual flooded the chat function with a barrage of offensive, inappropriate text.

The State Bar of California has seized the unauthorized law practice of a Garden Grove man who defrauded Vietnamese immigrants. Toan Quy Thai, doing business as Pacific Immigration Law Office, was disbarred by the District of Columbia and the federal Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) in 2017. He has never been licensed to practice law in California.

An online learning program designed to help applicants navigate the challenges they face when preparing for the California Bar Exam is showing promising results, measurably increasing the likelihood of passing the exam, a two-year analysis indicates. The State Bar is again offering the free program to October 2020 bar exam applicants.

The State Bar’s “First Annual Report Card on the Diversity of California’s Legal Profession,” published today, provides baseline data on the diversity and workplace satisfaction of California’s attorney population across multiple demographic groups and employment sectors. The report brings into stark reality that despite significant growth in the proportion of attorneys who are women and people of color over the past 30 years, California’s attorney population remains far from reflective of the state’s diversity.

At its July 16 meeting, the State Bar Board of Trustees approved an action plan designed to improve equity in the attorney discipline system, following up on the agency’s first-ever study on racial disparities in the disciplinary system. The first group of reforms aim to expand representation by counsel when an attorney faces a disciplinary investigation.

The State Bar of California has seized the unauthorized law practice of a South El Monte woman who victimized immigrants by claiming that she could help them with their immigration matters.