Willie Brown’s Plan to Ease the Pain of Lawyers

It’s a private little affair--a brother and a sister feuding over the parents’ estate. It seems to be less a matter of money than sentiment, bad blood and “principle.” The dispute, you see, centers on the possession of some of Dad’s artwork--and the man only sold two paintings in his lifetime.

But what infuriates the Van Nuys businesswoman we’ll call Jane North isn’t the way her husband and sister-in-law are butting heads. It’s the conduct of the Century City attorney that her husband, as the executor of the estate, hired to handle the trust.

The way the Norths tell it, the attorney was hired for $225 a hour, but then raised his hourly to $300 without telling anyone. He also failed to honor an agreement that he drafted himself. To top it off, he was just plain rude.

By the time the attorney was fired, he’d run up fees of more than $25,000 while leaving behind an estate still in dispute.

The Norths, in disgust, are lodging a formal complaint with the State Bar of California.

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The attorneys of California should rejoice at this news. For all I know, the lawyer or good ol’ sis may be in the right. Maybe the Norths are completely out to lunch. But at least they understand how to channel their anger. When it comes to lawyer-bashing, a formal complaint is morally superior to an assault rifle, and it packs more punch than a joke.

We return to the subject of lawyers today not in spite, but in a spirit of charity. Let’s face it: They need our help. They need people like the Norths to help police this profession. If attorneys really want to improve their reputation, they should join the public--their clients, after all--in demanding that the State Bar do more to weed out the shysters.

But guess what? That is not, it seems, what attorneys want. Or at least that is not the stated desire of Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, the trial lawyers’ best friend. With Assembly Bill 1544, he hopes to weaken a discipline system that, despite improvements in recent years, still moves with glacial speed and leaves many abuses unpunished.

Robert C. Fellmeth, director of the Center for Public Interest Law at the University of San Diego, is one attorney who thinks the current system should be bolstered, not weakened. As State Bar discipline monitor from 1987 though 1991, Fellmeth oversaw implementation of a 1988 bill that substantially raised State Bar dues and earmarked the money for disciplinary activities.

Before then, the discipline system was the worst kind of lawyer joke. Here in California, home to more than 135,000 attorneys, the State Bar would yank the licenses of only a handful of lawyers per year. This was window dressing, not discipline. Under the new system, more than 100 lawyers per year have been either disbarred or have resigned under pressure. Last week, State Bar President Harvey Saferstein told me that many attorneys think that discipline is now too tough: “They’re saying, ‘Ouch!’ ”

That’s the point, Harvey. Make them say ouch and promise to behave.

But now Brown, whose biggest campaign contributor is the powerful California Trial Lawyers Assn., would like to ease their pain.

Perhaps the most significant provision in AB 1544 is a one-year statute of limitations on the filing of complaints by consumers and a two-year limit on the State Bar in bringing action against lawyers. As Fellmeth pointed out in a letter to Brown, such limits would hamper investigators’ ability to identify chronic misbehavior. He suggests a seven-year limit.

“My review of attorney practices indicates that only a fraction of serious abuses are reported,” Fellmeth explained. “Often the Bar learns of them only after it begins its own investigation. . . . Many serious complaints now on file are multiple-act cases; they involve putting together a case based on a pattern over three or four years--often a serious pattern of abuse. The Bar should be able to pursue these cases.”

Chances are that the attorney who so offended the Norths won’t get disbarred, not unless investigators uncover a history of loathsome behavior. Problem attorneys also run the risk of suspensions. For lesser offenses, the Bar might order a lawyer to attend Ethics School.

Really. They have one.

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Brown’s bill raises an obvious question: Just who, precisely, is he trying to help?

It’s hard to imagine how this will benefit the public. Nor is it clear how this would help the legal profession as a whole. After all, the American Bar Assn., eager to improve the profession’s reputation, proposes no such statute of limitations.

Brown’s bill helps out only one class of people: Lawyers who pile up a lot of complaints.