State Bar Allots Funds to Investigate Complaints

The State Bar of California Board of Governors reaffirmed its commitment Saturday to self-regulation of the profession by allocating $208,338 for additional investigators to clear the growing backlog of complaints against errant lawyers.

The Bar, which polices the state’s 87,500 attorneys, has come under fire recently from the state Legislature and the public for failing to process promptly the 8,000 complaints it receives annually about lawyers’ conduct.

“The Legislature is concerned that the Bar is not fulfilling its role as a regulator, and we are faced with the requirement that in the next nine months to two years we are on trial to prove self-regulation is a good concept,” Joe S. Gray, the Sacramento attorney who heads the 22-member board’s Legislation Committee, said during the group’s two-day meeting in Los Angeles.

If self-policing cannot be made more effective, he warned, legislators may set up some separate watchdog to monitor lawyers.

San Francisco attorney David M. Heilbron, 48, who was elected Bar president Friday, said not only that the Bar must move quickly to resolve the backlogged complaints but also that discipline for certain offenses must be toughened.

He said he will seriously consider “determinate sentencing”-type rules requiring specific sanctions against lawyers for given improprieties.

“For a serious offense, there ought to be a serious penalty,” Heilbron told reporters. “This profession simply cannot tolerate people stealing from clients.”

Under the resolution adopted Saturday, money that had been budgeted to hire attorneys on the backlog project was switched to pay for investigators in the Los Angeles office, where the backlog of complaints awaiting processing is largest.

Further demonstrating concern over the Bar’s public image, the group by a narrow margin sanctioned plans for a panel discussion about whether local Bar associations should become involved in campaigns to oust Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird and other justices next year. The forum, similar to one planned by the Bar for its annual meeting in San Diego in September, will be sponsored by the Bar’s subsidiary, the California Young Lawyers Assn., in San Francisco in August.

Members opposed to the forum voiced concern that speakers might dent the Bar’s position of neutrality on Supreme Court and appellate court judicial retention elections.

“The timing is very suspicious and very inappropriate,” said Los Angeles realtor Richard A. Annotico, one of five public members of the board.

But the majority said the panel discussion will help fulfill the Bar’s duty to provide information to its members, agreeing with Los Angeles attorney Ronald L. Olson, who said, “There are responsible lawyers up and down this state wanting to know how they should act in this election.”

The board also endorsed pending legislation that would permit experimental use of tape recorders rather than certified shorthand reporters in Los Angeles Superior Court.