Making the bar more user-friendly
By Jeff Bleich
President, State Bar of
California
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Bleich |
One of my goals this year
has been to help rebuild trust in the bar, and you can’t build trust
unless you acknowledge problems and do things to fix them. In last month’s
column, I wrote about some common complaints to the State Bar President
and suggested how those complaints can be addressed. That column did not
discuss, however, why the State Bar receives as many complaints as it does,
or what the bar is doing to become more user-friendly.
To be fair, some complaints
about the State Bar are inevitable simply because of what the bar does.
The bar is a state agency, and state agencies have to do things that no
one likes to have done to them: whether that is being tested, audited,
investigated, disciplined or taxed. The State Bar has to do all five.
Because
the bar’s job is to ensure that lawyers are qualified to practice
in California and behave ethically, it administers a tough test, audits
CLE compliance, investigates complaints about lawyers, punishes any violators
and charges every lawyer in the state for the cost of running this system.
This is not a way to make friends, and so it is no wonder that the State
Bar does not generate the unqualified good will of, say, an ice cream parlor
or a wine bar.
But that does not mean
all criticisms about the bar are not valid. Some of the bar’s policies
need improving, and even the good policies may not always be implemented
perfectly.
At the bar’s most
recent planning session, we confronted the fact that most attorneys have
very few encounters with the State Bar — when they are admitted,
when they pay their dues and when they report CLE compliance — and
a negative experience in those situations matters, because it colors their
entire impression of the bar.
Back in the 1970s, a number
of cities discovered that the main reason their citizens disliked the government
was not because of poor legislative priorities or laws; it was because
everyone had to wait forever at the Department of Motor Vehicles to get
their license renewed. The DMV is most people’s only direct contact
with their government in a year, so they judge the efficiency, compassion
and quality of the government based on that encounter.
The State Bar is no different.
When a bar applicant has to wait a long time to get their moral character
application approved, or a bar member can’t reach a person to answer
their dues bill question, or an inactive lawyer has trouble confirming
an address change, or a lawyer can’t tell if he or she has satisfied
their CLE requirements, they think less of the bar. If it takes a long
time to reach the correct bar officer to get an answer — and the
caller is already annoyed before the conversation starts — this only
exacerbates the problem.
From the receiving end,
it is hard to stay continually upbeat when people are already mad before
you even pick up the phone. So we have taken a number of steps to help
make the bar more user-friendly, and more changes are on the way.
The Member Services Center
If you call the main switchboard,
it will likely take at least a couple of transfers before you reach the
person who could actually answer your question. That is infuriating but
not surprising.
The main switchboard operator cannot be trained to understand
every aspect of the State Bar and to triage each call properly to the exact
right person. So explaining your problem to the operator will not help;
it may only confuse matters and get you off on the wrong foot.
Instead, the bar has established
two efficient ways to get a direct answer to a member question: either
log on to www.calbar.ca.gov and hit the Member Services link,
or call the Member Services Center at 1-888-800-3400 (toll free). If you
call the main switchboard, they will most likely transfer you to the member
services office anyway, so calling that number directly will avoid the
annoyance of multiple transfers and get your call started right.
The current Web site
The State Bar is currently
operating with an out-of-date computer system. The bar’s dues have
been frozen at 1997 levels, and that shows in the bar’s technology
infrastructure. Nevertheless, the bar has done a good job making due with
its antiquated systems.
Many things are now available online that would
be slow and cumbersome to do by phone or in a letter. For example, it is
easier to pay your bar dues online than it is to write a check and mail
it in. Not only is it cheaper (since you don’t have to pay for the
stamp), but it is faster and it ensures that your payment is received on
time.
You can also change your
address, create your own private profile, report MCLE compliance, remove
yourself from promotional lists and get forms and information without having
to wait on hold and listen to Muzak.
Improving the Web site
The Bar’s Executive
Director, Judy Johnson, its head of member services, Starr Babcock, and
the Chief Technology Officer, Gary Clarke, are deeply committed to improving
the bar’s Web site this year. The scope of that improvement will
depend upon whether the legislature approves our request for an increased
technology budget. But if that is successful, members of the public and
the bar won’t have to worry about having a DMV experience.
Among other things, the
new robust Web site may include:
(1) expanding the information available
about every lawyer and giving lawyers a way to include information about
their background and practices;
(2) the ability to change your status from
active to inactive or vice versa and to replace a lost bar card;
(3) links
to content-rich materials;
(4) improvements in search functions (so, for
example, lawyers who have changed their maiden name can still be found
easily on line); and
(5) online real-time customer service.
If you have
other suggestions for improving the bar Web site, please send them to Gary
Clarke at gary.clarke@calbar.ca.gov and be sure to let your legislator
know that you support the bar’s technology improvements.
So while the bar may never
be beloved, it is on its way to being better liked, and more responsive.
And that’s a start.
• For the record: In last
month’s column, I said administrative suspensions of lawyers who
don’t pay their dues remain on the Web site for seven years. In fact,
it’s at least seven years; expungement happens only if the suspension
did not exceed 90 days and the member has an otherwise clean record.
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