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State Bar of California Releases Draft of 2017 Annual Discipline Report

Update, April 30, 2018: The State Bar has submitted the final 2017 Annual Discipline Report

Today the State Bar released a draft of its 2017 Annual Discipline Report for review by the Board of Trustees’ Regulation and Discipline Committee on April 16. The final Report, which provides an overview of the performance of the attorney discipline system, will be submitted to the Legislature on April 30.

In 2017 the State Bar and its prosecutorial arm, the Office of Chief Trial Counsel, implemented a number of comprehensive structural and process reengineering reforms designed to improve public protection for all California residents. Given the ambitious nature of these reforms, key measures from the draft Report indicate a decline in short-term performance as compared to the previous year.

Key 2017 workload measures include:

• Received 15,175 new complaints of attorney misconduct; of these 524 were immigration related;
• Received 668 unauthorized practice of law complaints, 158 of which were immigration related;
• Referred 315 unauthorized practice of law matters to law enforcement for potential prosecution;
• Closed 14,063 cases and filed formal charges in 483;
• Recommended disbarment or suspension to the Supreme Court in 592 cases;
• Disbarred 129 attorneys; suspended 134 attorneys; and reprimanded 52 attorneys.

An additional performance measure included in the Annual Discipline Report is case backlog, which grew in 2017. The Report notes that while the current backlog is up, the Office of Chief Trial Counsel has been developing a new system of case prioritization to provide more protection to vulnerable victims of attorney misconduct, which will ultimately ensure that the cases that cause the most harm to the public never end up in backlog status.

"Californians deserve to be protected by a strong attorney discipline system. Our internal reforms and improvements will help the State Bar better achieve our mission of protecting the public from attorney misconduct," said Leah Wilson, Executive Director of the State Bar of California.

Major initiatives of the State Bar Office of Chief Trial Counsel in 2017 include:

• Development of an improved case prioritization system to devote more resources to the cases which pose the greatest threat to the public;
• Implementation of a new Case Management System to increase transparency, effectiveness, and efficiency;
• Assessment of workload to allocate heavy caseloads among our staff fairly and efficiently.

The State Bar's ongoing reform efforts included additional measures  taken in 2017 to support the attorney discipline system and public protection:

• New mission statement with a specific emphasis on attorney discipline
• Easier access to complaint forms for attorney misconduct and the unauthorized practice of law (available in English, Spanish, Korean, Chinese, Russian and Vietnamese, the most common languages used in California)
• A major new Rule of Professional Conduct regarding the responsibilities of prosecutors
• Multilingual fraud alerts for consumers

Snapshot of 2017 Attorney Discipline Cases:

• State Bar of California charges lawyer who bilked clients of $400,000 in PG&E fire settlement money
• Attorney recommended for disbarment for taking money meant for Armenian genocide survivors
• State Bar helps clients of bogus immigration law practice
• State Bar files discipline charges against former L.A. City Attorney Carmen Trutanich for prosecutorial misconduct.

"I'm proud of what our hard-working team accomplished over the last year to address over 15,000 complaints of attorney misconduct and unauthorized practice of law, amid a major structural reorganization. Together, we have implemented substantial reforms to ensure that protection of all California residents is our highest priority, " said Steven Moawad, Chief Trial Counsel of the State Bar of California.