Back To The Future Once Again At The California Bar

// I wonder if the State Bar of California is ever going to get this right. Now the bar is saying that paraprofessionals cannot have an interest in a law firm. That’s a 180-degree turn from its original recommendation last year that such would be OK under certain circumstances. Not anymore. Would the bar please make up its mind? I get that the original proposal was made before the chairs of the Senate and Assembly Judiciary Committees made their displeasure known with the original proposal. I think the bar caved on this because the Legislature controls the State Bar purse strings. We all remember what happened if we pissed off our parents — no allowance.

Readers know that I am not reluctant to slap the State Bar upside the head, but I try to give kudos where kudos is due, and there are two proposals that the State Bar has made that should be approved. The first is that the State Bar has proposed extending the Provisional Licensure Program through the end of this year. While it officially expired June 1, 2022, the hope is that the California Supreme Court will extend it through year end.

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The second proposal is the creation of the Office of the Ombuds that will function as an “independent, impartial and confidential resource to ensure that complaints about State Bar staff or actions receive full and impartial review.” This is more than just a response to the Girardi furor. The office will also help to educate and assist legal consumers and the public in identifying available resources. Not everything that happens arises to the level of a formal complaint against an attorney. Hopefully, the office will be able to separate the wheat from the chaff so that the system can focus on serious attorney misconduct that warrants discipline.

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While initially, the Ombuds office will focus on attorney discipline complaints and admissions, another task will be to develop and oversee a public education plan designed to empower legal consumers and the public with knowledge about their legal rights.

Forty years ago (yes, it was that long ago, and I still remember) the State Bar had a community education program that did exactly that. The bar had a series of excellent pamphlets on a variety of legal concepts that were distributed statewide and there was always a clamor for more from legal service providers, lawyers, libraries, courthouses, and others. The pamphlets were informative and written in plain English.

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I was on the State Bar committee that collaborated with the community education department, and my client at the time underwrote publication of several pamphlets. However, the State Bar in its finite wisdom cut the program entirely, and now here we are 40 years later, reinventing the wheel. I would imagine that there are no pamphlets extant in the land, and they obviously need updating, but really? Another example of attending only to short-range needs and the whims of legislative overseers and bar management.

If public protection was the State Bar’s mantra then, as it is now, when the State Bar ditched the program, it screwed up bigly. Here had been a positive way to connect with the public, to help them understand their legal rights and that lawyers aren’t often the baddies that everyone (even then) thought that they were. The State Bar cut the program off at its knees. How ironic that it didn’t realize the value in educating the public about the law and what lawyers can and cannot do. Hopefully, resurrection of the program will include sufficient ways to meet the needs of those who are computer literate and those who aren’t.

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Now, more than ever, the public needs more education about what lawyers do, what the law is, and how best to understand those concepts. (Understand that there was no internet, Facebook, Twitter, and so on in olden times.) If the State Bar is truly serious about community education now, then it should move forthwith. Time’s a-wasting.

Speaking of unsocial media, it’s so nice to know that I am not the only lawyer who hates Twitter. In an admittedly unscientific ATL poll, among the nuggets of information were the following: more than half of the respondents thought that Twitter’s use for networking and business development was poor, and 75% of the respondents thought that Twitter has a negative effect on our democracy. Do you think Elon Musk cares?

At least among these responding lawyers, Twitter is the social media site that lawyers love to hate. For the record, I had nothing to do with the poll, and I did not rig the results. They show that Twitter is truly a time suck for lawyers with little redeeming networking or business development value.

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In the old days, aka before Twitter, or even before emails, if you wanted to kvetch about something, and you didn’t want to get caught in the endless loop of voice recognition software or voice mail, you had to think about what you were going to say, write a letter (either typed or handwritten — does anyone still know what cursive handwriting is?), find a stamp (what’s that?) and then mail it from whatever locations still had mail boxes. Nowadays, in the Twitterverse, it’s simply “ready, fire, aim,” and whatever you have said is out there for the world to see. Usually, it’s not a pretty picture. At least, I don’t think it is.

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Jill Switzer has been an active member of the State Bar of California for over 40 years. She remembers practicing law in a kinder, gentler time. She’s had a diverse legal career, including stints as a deputy district attorney, a solo practice, and several senior in-house gigs. She now mediates full-time, which gives her the opportunity to see dinosaurs, millennials, and those in-between interact — it’s not always civil. You can reach her by email at [email protected].

Topics

California, California State Bar, Government, Jill Switzer, Twitter