UPDATE

Whittling away ultimately may harm public by NANCY McCARTHY Staff Writer ————————

... CONTINUED FROM FRONTPAGE

The most serious worry for bar officials is a measure by Assemblyman Bill Morrow, R-Oceanside, that restricts bar activities and slashes dues by one-third to one half. The limitations, says State Bar President Marc Adelman, imperil many public protection programs, ranging from attorney discipline to the Client Security Fund to certifying lawyer referral services.

The bill, which would reduce dues to $316 this year and $272 in 1999, "is unrealistic if it attempts to provide any source of public protection," Adelman said.

"I think it cuts too deeply," said Peter Kaye, a former public member of the board of governors who urged legislators to reduce bar dues by $25 last year. "I think it does jeopardize public protection."

But Wendy Borcherdt, a Los Angeles political consultant who has been a public board member for nearly five years, said Republicans have no intention of hurting programs which benefit consumers. She suggested the bills are starting points in the legislative process, with many elements serving as bargaining chips. "Both sides go in asking for everything possible and are willing to compromise," Borcherdt said.

In addition to the dues reduction, which would most immediately affect the discipline system, the Morrow bill would eliminate the Client Security Fund, the Commission on Judicial Nominees Evaluation (JNE), ethics and trust accounting school, Interest on Lawyer Trust Accounts (IOLTA), and certification of lawyer referral services.

Each of those, said Adelman, serves the public and dumping them is too high a price for lower dues. "There isn't a lawyer I know that would like to pay more as opposed to less dues," he said. "But when Assemblyman Morrow starts to take away things that serve the public, I think he'll start to lose allies. Someone's going to suffer and it could be his constituents."

State Bar executive director Steve Nissen said the public is largely unaware of the impact on consumers of wholesale changes to the bar. "People think this is a political spat," he said. "They don't see how it would affect them directly."

Annual fees of $272 would be lower than the dues level in 1988, when loud criticism of the bar's discipline operation and its lengthy case backlog led to a dues increase to repair the system. "I'm completely in favor of reducing dues to a realistic level," said Nissen, "but we couldn't run the discipline system on that in ‘88, so certainly we can't run it today on less."

Reforms included creation of a State Bar Court, which Adelman described as a respected model for the nation and one which, importantly, uses no taxpayer money.

He suggested that a scaled-back discipline system may result in prosecutorial discretion which leads to charging only the most egregious cases of misconduct. The result, he said, is that "someone out there is suffering from that. You can't measure the damage a small case may have on someone of modest means."

Both Adelman and Nissen noted that programs such as ethics school and trust accounting school are preventive in nature, protecting the public and saving money in the long run.

The Client Security Fund, which costs each attorney $40 annually, is strictly a consumer protection program, they said, and its elimination will hurt consumers.

The JNE commission, which screens judicial candidates for the governor, "provides the people of California with the best potential jurists and certainly serves a valid public purpose," Adelman said. "Everyone benefits from the selection of qualified judicial candidates — lawyers and the public."

Borcherdt said she opposes elimination of protection programs and believes the Client Security Fund will be funded. She believes dues can be reduced, but says it has been difficult "to get accurate figures of what it costs to run various programs and activities. I can't come up with a number until I see what programs are going to be in place."

Kaye, who complained often while on the board about how the bar develops its annual budget, said inefficiencies should be corrected without discarding entire programs that provide some good. "You figure out what's essential and what's efficient and the dues fall where they should," he said.

"I'm hopeful that some sort of compromise will be reached to preserve programs and public protection and still make the bar an efficient and responsive organization."