PD Editorial: California doesn’t discipline attorneys who violate the public trust

California’s disciplinary system for lawyers is broken, leaving clients to roll the dice that their lawyer isn’t one of the bad ones shielded by bureaucracy. The Legislature should intervene.

The State Bar of California is responsible for making sure that the state’s nearly 280,000 lawyers are qualified and do their jobs ethically. For example, it administers the bar exam that new lawyers must pass before they can practice in California.

The bar also handles disciplinary complaints against lawyers. When people allege that an attorney took advantage of them or didn’t follow a court order, the bar investigates and can recommend punishment from a reprimand to disbarment. The latter means a lawyer loses the right to practice in California.

Recent disciplinary cases in Sonoma County resulted in a Petaluma attorney being suspended for six months and put on probation for two years as well as a Santa Rosa attorney getting disbarred. Those two must have been unlucky. These days, the odds of a disciplinary action are way down.

In 2015, a state audit found that the bar had a huge backlog of disciplinary cases. When it did complete one, auditors concluded, if the attorney was found to have violated the rules, the punishment tended to be light. That environment eroded public trust in the legal system. The bar promised to fix things.

It didn’t. By law, the state auditor reviews the bar’s operations every two years. The newest audit found that the backlog remains and disciplinary action is even rarer.

The number of cases jammed up in the system nearly doubled since 2015, and the time to investigate cases increased by more than half. As a result, the audit said, attorneys who had serious allegations against them continue practicing law, putting clients at risk of further legal failure.

Those clients aren’t just criminal defendants. People who need help with a will or trust, a patent application, settling a divorce and myriad other mundane legal tasks need to trust that their lawyer is skilled and abides by the regulations and laws of the state.

Even more troubling, the number of lawyers who were disciplined at the end of an investigation fell by more than half from 2015 to 2019. The bar “cannot adequately explain” that decline to auditors, according to the auditor’s report. Surely it’s not that fewer lawyers are getting into trouble. The number of complaints held steady.

Contributing to the turmoil no doubt is the fact that leadership at the bar has been in shambles. The bar hasn’t had a state Senate-confirmed chief trial counsel for more than five years. That person oversees the bar’s discipline system. The bar also has been under an interim executive director for more than a year.

Lawmakers took note of the audit and are poised to act. A bill in the Senate — SB 211 — would prevent the bar from charging its members fees until the Senate approves a new chief trial counsel and the Legislature can reassess what the fees should be. Legislative staff also recommend that the Legislature appoint the chief trial counsel and a new executive director because the bar has proved incapable of filling the vacancies in a timely manner.

Those are good ideas to help right things. It’s always a little dicey when the Legislature starts to meddle in professional organizations, but the bar was created by the state to protect the public. It is failing at that mission right now. It’s past time for an intervention.

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