REGULARS

Bills will be mailed at the end of November and must be paid by Feb. 1, 2000.

Details of the measure include:

Attorneys who make less than $25,000 per year will be entitled to a 50 percent reduction in dues, and those earning less than $40,000 will receive a 25 percent break.

In addition to fewer hours, the MCLE requirement includes four hours of ethics instruction and eliminates the exemption for retired judges. (The MCLE changes require a new rule of court, which the bar likely will send to the Supreme Court early next year.)

The bar will continue to be governed by a mostly elected board of governors.

It must submit to regular financial and performance audits.

Schiff and Hertzberg said the new legislation will protect consumers and make the bar more accountable.

"Consumers with complaints about attorneys desperately need the protections and lawyer disciplinary system afforded them by the State Bar, and lawyers deserve a bar that better serves their needs as a profession," said Schiff.

"At long last," added Hertzberg, "Californians can once again have confidence that the attorneys they hire will be held accountable for their mistakes. This bill . . . makes the bar better by making it more accountable to both lawyers and the public."

Wilson vetoed the bar's dues bill in October 1997, charging that its members considered the organization "bloated, arrogant, oblivious and unresponsive." He also accused the bar of violating lobbying restrictions placed on it by the Supreme Court by taking political positions with which its members disagreed.

Without a dues authorization, the bar could collect only $77 from its members. The resulting financial crisis led to layoffs of nearly 500 employees in June 1998, the elimination of most programs and the almost total suspension of its discipline operation.

Year-long efforts to win a new dues bill collapsed at the last minute in 1998, but the bar managed to convince the state Supreme Court in December to order an emergency assessment of $173 to support the discipline office.

In a related development, the bar board of governors decided that attorneys who made voluntary dues payments in 1998 and/or 1999 may apply all or part of those fees to their 2000 or later membership dues or may request a refund.

At a meeting in mid-September, the board unanimously approved a policy to credit voluntary payments to member accounts, acting on what board member James Otto called "a matter of honor."

When Wilson vetoed the bar's fee bill, the bar solicited voluntary dues payments and collected $9.8 million from members in 1998 and about $1.8 million last year. Although it promised that fee overpayments would be refunded, the bar offered no refunds or credits without passage of a fee bill in Sacramento.