REGULARS

In a case watched closely by legal services advocates throughout the country, a federal judge in Texas has ruled that using interest on client money held by lawyers to pay for legal services for the poor is constitutional.

Interest on Lawyers Trust Accounts (IOLTA) programs do not amount to a “taking” of client property under the Fifth Amendment, ruled U.S. District Judge James R. Nowlin in a case brought in Austin, Texas.

“In the absence of IOLTA,” Nowlin wrote, “the money would generate income for nobody but the banks.” He dismissed with prejudice the case brought against the Texas Equal Access to Justice Foundation.

See IOLTA RULING

Despite the efforts of California’s law schools to increase minority enrollments, it appears unlikely that the percentage of non-white attorneys practicing in the state will grow much in the next 20 years.

In fact, the State Bar “will still be disproportionately white when compared to the percentage of whites in the general population of the state,” according to projections offered recently to the bar’s board of governors.

Cautioning that he is neither a demographer nor a statistician, Jerome Braun, head of the bar’s admissions office, said ethnicity data suggest that two decades from now, the number of whites both practicing law and in the general population will decline.

However, the number of white lawyers “declines at a somewhat lesser rate” than in the general population and the State Bar “will still be disproportionately white when compared to the percentage of whites in the general population of the state,” Braun said.

The trends suggest a very slow closing of the gap between the number of African-Americans practicing law compared to their numbers in the general population. The gap in the Hispanic population actually increases, and the gap in the Asian-American population remains about the same, Braun said.

See DIVERSITY

An appellate court turned back another challenge to the State Bar’s minimum continuing legal education requirements, saying its hands were tied by a Supreme Court ruling that MCLE is constitutional.

The First District Court of Appeal said last month it is bound by the California Supreme Court’s decision in Warden v. State Bar, which last year upheld the constitutionality of the MCLE requirements.

“Although we previously issued an opinion in Warden in which we agreed with the well-reasoned criticism of the dissenting opinions . . . we are now bound by the decision of the majority of our high court to affirm the judgment in favor of the State Bar,” wrote Justice Lawrence Stevens.

Oakland attorney Mark Greenberg and two other lawyers challenged the MCLE requirements in a lawsuit filed in 1991. Part of the case (a challenge to the exemptions) became moot with the Warden ruling, but the plaintiffs moved forward with arguments that the requirements violate attorneys’ First Amendment rights.

But the justices said Warden required them to reject Greenberg’s assertion that California lawyers are improperly forced to attend classes which are not germane to the legal profession.

“The majority, and even the dissenters, in Warden apparently agreed that the MCLE program requirements were rationally related to the ‘consumer protection’ goals of the legislation, the needs of [the] legal profession, and legal practitioners’ professional role within that system,” Stevens wrote.

See MCLE UPHELD

The State Bar Board of Governors last month appointed its second interim executive director in a year, naming longtime staff attorney Marie Moffat to the temporary post.

The board hopes to choose a permanent chief by the end of this month. Moffat, who has been acting general counsel since 1997, also was given that job on a permanent basis.

See MOFFAT NAMED