State Bar celebrates its 80th anniversary
By Kristina Flaherty
Staff Writer
When California’s unified State Bar was launched in 1927, no one predicted
it would be easy. “The first year will be a crucial one, for we have
no charted course to follow, no precedent to aid us, nor a guiding star other
than our ideals and conscience,” Joseph Webb, the first State Bar president,
wrote in a 1927 State Bar Journal column. “And as we are sailing upon
an uncharted sea,” he warned, “mistakes may be made and there may
be criticisms to meet.”
But the early State Bar leaders were determined to “kick the rascals
out of the profession,” raise admission standards and work collectively
to improve the administration of justice.
Eighty years later, the State Bar — alternately lauded, attacked, misunderstood
and closely scrutinized — has seen its ranks swell from roughly 10,000
practicing attorneys to more than 210,000. It investigates more than 3,000
complaints annually in the nation’s only attorney discipline system with
a full-time State Bar Court. It administers the bar examination to more than
14,000 prospective attorneys each year. It reimburses funds — about $81
million in 34 years — to attorney theft victims. It distributes lawyer
trust account interest — some $250 million so far — to legal programs
serving the poor. And with its many committees and sections, it works to improve
the administration of justice.
The changes are dramatic. But what’s just as striking — from historical
archives and interviews with past leaders — is how much has remained
the same. The challenges to the State Bar’s self-regulatory role, for
example, resurface again and again.
The State Bar of California was created by the State Bar Act in 1927 to assist
the Supreme Court in regulating the legal profession and in improving the administration
of justice. The legislature provides oversight by regularly approving — or
disapproving — the amount of man-datory dues collected annually from
all California attorneys.
From its beginnings, the bar faced numerous challenges to its existence. In
1927, bar leaders had to start from scratch, initially registering some 10,000
attorneys at $3 each. In the first year alone, they appointed local committees
to hear client complaints, drafted procedural rules and developed the nation’s
first enforceable rules of professional conduct for lawyers. In addition, some
2,500 attorneys were recruited for new “sections” to study five
areas — civil procedure; criminal law and procedure; courts and judicial
officers; regulatory commissions; and professional conduct — and recommend
changes to the legislature.
The unauthorized practice of law by banks and trust companies, court reform, “ambulance
chasing,” professional ethics and attorney qualifications were among
the topics that dominated the professional debate.
Since its creation, the State Bar has continually developed and revised programs — often
with wide input — aimed at improving admissions standards, attorney regulation
and the administration of justice. But the ever-changing times, too, have shaped
and driven the bar’s evolution.
During World War II, for example, a State Bar “War Work” committee
pledged that no one in the armed forces “should suffer loss of personal
or property rights . . . for lack of adequate legal advice.” California
attorneys handled some 55,000 legal matters free of charge. A State Bar “G.I.
Legal Aid” radio series briefed military families on pertinent legal
topics. And to the California attorneys serving in the armed forces, the bar
sent out surveys to determine their homecoming needs — from offices,
to stenographers, to help finding a job.
The events of the so-called McCarthy era in the mid-1950s, too, triggered
a State Bar response, this time in defense of the attorney’s duty to
represent his or her client. Several California lawyers representing witnesses
in House Un-American Activi-ties Committee hearings found themselves accused
of being Communists and then ejected for protesting. Board members promptly
traveled to the Columbia Broadcasting Studios in Los Angeles to hear the recorded
proceedings for themselves, and, in turn, passed a resolution declaring that
the rights of a witness to counsel should be protected. It marked the first
time that the organized bar in the United States took a sound position against
McCarthyism.
Some of the bar’s most vital work has historically received little notice,
including its role in developing the Family Law Act, the Civil Discovery Act,
and the civil, probate, corporations and tax codes, as well as the Code of
Civil Procedure. Bar leaders pushed for court reform as early as the 1940s,
and a decade later helped achieve the creation of two lower courts: municipal
and justice. The bar laid the groundwork for later trial court coordination
and, most recently, court unification.
The issue of public confidence, how to win it and how to keep it, remains
another constantly recurring topic among State Bar leaders, although some acknowledge
that public trust may always be a moving target of sorts. “One of the
large problems is that there is always something coming up that undermines
public confidence,” said former longtime executive director Herb Rosenthal,
citing the Watergate scandal as the kind of incident that can erode confidence
almost overnight.
In the wake of that crisis, there was a move toward more public involvement
in the bar. Public members were appointed to the board in the mid-1970s and
non-lawyers were brought into the discipline process. Professionals were hired
in the early 1970s to investigate and prosecute disciplinary matters and by
the end of the decade, a volunteer State Bar Court was created. Then, 10 years
later, the first and still only professional State Bar Court was created.
In recent decades, the bar also has launched various public education initiatives
to help citizens understand their legal rights and responsibilities. Continuing
legal education, legal specialization, lawyer assistance and diversion programs,
legal services for those with limited resources and access to justice also
have been at the heart of many State Bar efforts.
Recent years also have seen new restrictions placed on State Bar activities.
In 1990, for example, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Keller v. State Bar that
the bar could not use mandatory dues for programs beyond its core functions.
In late 1997, Gov. Wilson’s dues bill veto marked the most serious threat
ever to the State Bar’s existence. The reviving dues bill, enacted in
1999, set further limitations on the nation’s largest state bar. The
fallout is a streamlined bar that is today more restricted in how it spends
member dues.
If history is any indication, however, the State Bar may also be destined
for a perennial debate over what its role is and should be. Some see an inherent
tension in the bar’s role, representing lawyers on the one hand and policing
them on the other.
“That, from time to time, causes the groups with whom the bar interacts,
such as the legislature, to conclude that the bar is not doing a good enough
job of its enforcement role and, on the other hand, from time to time, to cause
the members to feel that the bar is not representing their interests adequately,” said
federal Judge Margaret Morrow, the bar’s first woman president. “It’s
a very, I think, delicate and difficult balance.”
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