Letters to the Editor         

Discipline system leaves much to be desired

In the January 1998 Bar Journal, there are two fundamental problems with bar President Marc Adelman saying “85 percent of the bar’s general fund supports its public protection activities.”

The California attorney system neither disciplines attorneys nor protects the public. In the discipline summaries, I routinely see counsel slapped on the wrist for actions for which another person would go to jail. Our “self-regulation” works more in the manner of a mutual protection society of the worst kind.

Discipline fails to protect the public because the protection is not public. If one knows how, one can find out some information on an attorney.

Alas, the general public does not know how to find this information. Is it any wonder attorneys are the butt of the public humor? We are the creators of our own woe.

I oppose the current bar primarily for this gross and inexcusable inefficiency. Eliminate the self-serving bureaucracy and start over.

Thanks to the governor

Thank you, Gov. Wilson. For the first time I feel represented in California’s political process.

Hueston G. Fortner
Los Angeles

Me, too!

As much as I oppose almost all of Gov. Wilson’s public policy stands, when it comes to the State Bar, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Thanks to our governor, I saved $381 on my bar dues last year, and I do appreciate it!

George Aaron
Tarzana

Kopp’s idea has merit

Over the past few months, I have virtually read nothing but complaints from members about their dissatisfaction with the State Bar and their desire to change things.

Where were all these voices when a majority voted in the 1996 plebiscite to maintain the status quo?

For all the credit we receive from the public about our intelligence and shrewdness, perhaps what we need is some courage to get rid of the mandatory bar and rebuild this organization.

I favor Sen. Kopp’s approach to restructuring the bar. It has worked for other jurisdictions and will work here as well.

Robert Sabahat
Anaheim Hills

Bar navigators reading upside-down maps

Bar President Marc Adelman claims in his editorial pitch in your February 1998 issue to have read “countless letters” and to have been subjected to a “constant stream of letters and countless hours of meetings with attorneys.”

Maybe so, but what has the poor man learned from all that?

He simply clenches his jaw and asks us to put up with bar dues as high as $419, lamenting as he does so the “extremely difficult cuts [that] lie ahead.” Difficult for whom — or rather cui bono?

Mr. Adelman is invited to read the letters in the Bar Journal which speak to the real point: why a very large number of California lawyers are fed up with an extraordinarily costly organization which seems mainly aimed at perpetuating itself.

Sen. Quentin Kopp has laid out the truth of how costly the California bar really is, and how unnecessarily so — it’s time to end conscription.

One can understand that Mr. Adelman may conceive his mission as president to be that of saving the ship at all costs, but most of us lawyers are by now tired of paying for the derelict and overpriced wreck in question.

Channing Bates
Santa Barbara

Dismantle the behemoth

The State Bar should be voluntary. Period.

Then the insurance defense lawyers and partners in the large law firms can run it any way they choose.

I already belong to the voluntary bars which promote my clients’ best interests. The people of the state of California benefit from discipline and should pay for it.

The only logic behind the idea of running a mandatory bar is to oppress the “little guy’s” lawyers with lobbying and discipline designed to tilt the playing field one way or another, depending on who is in power, and to use the money derived from the very groups oppressed to accomplish the “killing.”

I’m tired of the propaganda on this issue. Let’s dismantle this worthless behemoth and move on.

Timothy Lee Davis
San Diego

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