POSTED BY THIS BLOG'S SENIOR EDITOR:
My definition of a lawyer is one who is institutionally trained in law school to LIE, CHEAT, STEAL, ORCHESTRATE PERJURY, COMMIT PERJURY, GAME THE LEGAL SYSTEM FOR MONEY and still call themselves "officers of the court".
Lawyers, like lawyer-judges are a protected substantially criminal class. There is no profession that attacks the sociopath more than the law field.
Lawyer-judges, while they sit up on thrones wearing choir robes, are as dishonest as the typical crooked and desperate California lawyer. Judges will certainly claim they are overworked, so they let their lawyer colleagues lead them by a noose in their noses so the corrupt judges do not have to read pleadings or do their due diligence. The lawyer-judges perpetrate this injustice despite the fact they know that their lawyer colleagues overwhelmingly tend to be pathological liars.
This blog has long supported our friends at Judicial Watch in their efforts to pull the judge class out of their crooked closets
JS
State Agency That Disciplines
Judges Fights to Keep Operating in Secrecy after 56 Yrs.
AUGUST
11, 2017
A California
judicial commission that’s operated in secrecy for more than five and a half
decades is engaged in a legal battle to thwart an audit ordered by state
legislators and Judicial Watch has filed a court brief supporting the long overdue probe in the name of
transparency. A court hearing has been rescheduled three times and shuffled
around to different judges, with the latest scheduled for August 17 before
Judge Suzanne Bolanos in San Francisco Superior Court. The case sheds
much-needed light on the unbelievable history of a taxpayer-funded agency
that’s conducted its business in private—and with no oversight—for 56 years,
even though protecting the public is among its key duties. The agency is known
as Commission on Judicial Performance (CJP) and it’s charged with enforcing
rigorous standards of judicial conduct and disciplining judges in the nation’s
largest court system.
California’s
court system serves over 37 million people and has more than double the judges
(1,882) of the federal judicial system, which has 840. The CJP should serve as
a tool to keep the system in check. Instead the commission has dismissed 90% of
complaints about judges in the last decade, according to figures published in a
California newspaper. Only 3.4% ended in disciplinary action and less than 1% led to
public censure. None of the decisions were transparent, the news story reveals,
and critics have demanded accountability for CJP for years, asserting that the
commission gives “biased and inept judges a pass.” In its 2016 annual
report, CJP discloses that
1,079 of the 1,210 complaints it received were dismissed after “initial
review.” Discipline was issued in only 45 cases with more than half of the
offenders receiving an “advisory letter.” Eleven others received “private
admonishment,” six got “public admonishment” and eight “public discipline.”
Only one judge was removed from office and another received public censure.
Offenses included on-bench abuse of authority, administrative malfeasance, bias
or appearance of bias and improper political activities.
Last year, a
California legislative
committee authorized State
Auditor Elaine Howle to conduct the first-ever examination into the CJP,
including whether the commission upholds due process when considering
allegations against judges and how investigators determine which complaints to
dismiss. Lawmakers finally acted after mounting pressure from a variety of
sources, including Court Reform LLC, a group that pushes for fair and
transparent courts that’s found CJP is “ineffective at enforcing judicial
discipline, wastes public money and is too secretive about its operations.” An
in-depth probeconducted
by the group compares the data and policies of judicial disciplinary
commissions in California and three other states and finds that the CJP is
“under-investigating and under-disciplining judicial misconduct and
misappropriating public funds.” It calls for the state auditor to investigate.
Howle is appointed by the governor and her office functions as an independent
external auditor that provides nonpartisan, accurate and timely assessments of
California government’s financial and operational activities.
To stop the
audit, the CJP sued Howle and her office asserting that a probe would violate
its constitutionally granted power to conduct confidential investigations. The
complaint also says that allowing a review of its operations would violate the
separation of powers doctrine that prohibits one branch of government from
intruding on the powers of another. In her response, Howle fires back that the CJP does not have special immunity
because it was created by the state constitution and that the California
legislature regularly directs the auditor to audit other agencies established
by the constitution, including the State Bar, Public Utilities Commission and
the University of California. Furthermore, Howle’s attorneys write, audits of
other state agencies, including the Attorney General’s Office and Judicial
Council, have not interfered with their core functions. “No court has ever
blocked the Legislature’s effort to obtain information about a state agency’s
performance via an audit,” Howle’s response to the court states. “There is no
reason—and no legal justification—to start now.”
In its lengthy
friend of the court brief (officially known by its Latin term, amicus curiae), Judicial Watch acknowledges that there
may be a valid reason to keep certain parts of CJP’s work confidential, but the
lack of information regarding its procedures and overall judicial discipline
undermines public confidence in the integrity and independence of the state
judiciary. “An audit issued by a competent, neutral auditor advances public
confidence in the integrity of the audited public agency,” Judicial Watch
writes in its brief. Judicial Watch also mentions its firsthand experience with
CJP’s judicial complaint process and addresses CJP assertions that an audit
would damage confidentiality. “In Judicial Watch’s experience, CJP’s
disciplinary process is opaque with virtually no information publicly available
about how the CJP handles complaints or when, if at all, it acts. Judicial
Watch has been unable to ascertain if any action was ever taken regarding its
complaints.” Regarding the confidentiality issue, Judicial Watch points out that
confidential information is regularly shared between governmental agencies
without the information losing its confidential status.
CJP was
established in 1960 as a state agency to investigate complaints of judicial
misconduct and incapacity as well as for disciplining judges. It has 11 members
that include one appellate court justice and two superior court judges
appointed by California’s Supreme Court. The others include two attorneys and
two lay citizens appointed by the governor and four additional lay citizens
appointed by the Senate Committee on Rules and Speaker of the Assembly. Members
are appointed to four-year terms. The CJP’s mandate is to protect the public, enforce rigorous standards of
judicial conduct and maintain public confidence in the integrity and
independence of the judicial system. It’ difficult to accomplish that in
absolute secrecy.
43
California judges were reprimanded for misconduct last year
Sex in
chambers and delegating decisions are just some of the errant behaviors by
California judges in 2014
Two judges had sex with women in
their chambers, one with his former law students, the other with his court
clerk.
A traffic
court judge delegated his job to his clerk. While the judge was in chambers,
the clerk heard pleas and imposed sentences.
A family law
court judge excoriated two parents who appeared before him as
"rotten" and the mother a "train wreck" and a
"liar."
The judges,
among 43 disciplined last year by California's Commission on Judicial
Performance, received rebukes ranging from public censure or admonishment to a
confidential "advisory" letter. The state watchdog agency documented
the transgressions in an annual reportthat
provides a behind-the-scenes look at errant behavior on the bench and how it is
addressed.
Sexual
transgressions are likely to be viewed with gravity, as are repeated remarks
from the bench that belittle and humiliate lawyers and litigants, the new
report suggested. The vast majority of complaints against judges result in no
discipline, and most misconduct is resolved by sending judges private letters.
Engaging in sexual
intercourse in the courthouse is the height of irresponsible and improper
behavior by a judge.—
California's Commission on Judicial Performance
UC Berkeley
law professor Christopher Kutz said a judge's conduct must be extreme before
the system metes out discipline. The state has about 1,800 judges, and
generally fewer than 50 each year receive some form of reprimand.
"Certainly,"
Kutz said, judges disparage lawyers and litigants "much more often than
the number of disciplinary cases would suggest. There is a lot of latitude for
judicial misbehavior."
Judicial
misconduct may be underreported because few people know there is even a
mechanism for filing complaints, said Victoria B. Henley, director and chief
counsel for the watchdog agency.
Judges
elected by voters to the trial bench are more likely to get in trouble than
jurists appointed by governors, and female judges and those with the most
seniority tend to have less misconduct, records show.
"It
does vary from year to year," Henley said. "Here it is only past
March and we already have three cases with formal charges" against judges.
Among the five
most serious offenders last year were Orange County Superior Court Judge Scott
Steiner, a former prosecutor elected to the bench, and Kern County Superior
Court Judge Cory Woodward, appointed by former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Steiner had
sex in his chambers with two former students and tried to get one of them a job
in the county prosecutor's office, the commission said. Woodward had sex with
his court clerk in chambers and passed her salacious notes during proceedings,
according to the report.
"Engaging
in sexual intercourse in the courthouse is the height of irresponsible and
improper behavior by a judge," the commission said.
Woodward's
misconduct could have led to his removal from the bench, the report said, but
being contrite, fully cooperating with investigators and earning reviews that
he was hard-working, intelligent and conscientious spared him.
Former Los
Angeles Superior Court Judge Ronald M. Sohigian, appointed by Gov. George
Deukmejian in 1988, received a public admonishment for treating attorneys in a
"sarcastic and belittling manner." Sohigian told a lawyer who
objected to a ruling that he would explain it to him "sometime when you
pay tuition."
The
commission said Sohigian was a repeat offender — he had been privately
disciplined twice before — and it rejected his defense that he was trying in
one case to curb a lawyer's disrespectful attitude.
"Even
when dealing with difficult litigants and counsel," the commission said,
'"judges are required to comport themselves in accordance with the Code of
Judicial Ethics." The rules say judges must be dignified and courteous.
Solano
County Superior Court Judge Daniel J. Healy, cited for denigrating family law
litigants, called parents "rotten," told others they were
"stupid and thuggish" and "a total human disaster."
In one case,
he told parents that if their child were like them, they "might as well
have her start walking the street as a hooker." In another, Healy told a
father that his plans to get a job represented "pie in the sky"
because he was "morbidly obese and at risk of dying any time."
Healy,
elected to the bench in 2010, explained that he had to be blunt to send a
message.
The fifth
case of public punishment was fairly clear cut. San Mateo County Superior Court
Judge Joseph Scott, appointed by former Gov. Gray Davis in 2003, received a
public admonishment for driving under the influence.
Nearly 90%
of the complaints came from litigants or their relatives. Attorneys filed
complaints in 3% of the cases and judges and court staff in 2%.
The report
showed that the number of complaints has been generally rising since 2005, and
the percentage of those disciplined has been relatively flat. The commission
has recommended yanking judges from the bench only six times since 2005, a
sanction reserved for persistent and pervasive misconduct.
Misconduct
that led to removals in the past included ticket-fixing, accepting expensive
gifts from lawyers and litigants whose cases the judges decided, lying to the
commission and submitting false reports for court expenses, Henley said. Three
judges in San Diego County who were removed on the commission's recommendation
later went to federal prison for using the U.S. mail to transmit false
information to the commission, Henley said.
The bulk of
disciplinary cases result in confidential letters advising judges of their
errant ways or rebuking them. The governor and the president can see these
so-called stinger letters if the judges are under consideration for promotion.
Most
discipline last year and in the past involved judges who mistreated litigants
and lawyers. In 2014, people without lawyers appeared to suffer
disproportionally from judicial wrath. One unidentified judge not only berated
a criminal defendant representing himself but "sometimes appeared to assume
a prosecutorial role in questioning the defendant," the commission said.
Several
judges received advisory letters for failing to disclose potential conflicts of
interest or showing favoritism. One judge got in trouble for comments on social
media that smacked of impropriety and partiality. Another was dinged for
waiting more than nine months to sign a proposed judgment in a civil case.
Henley said
most of the dismissed complaints involve judges' rulings. The commission, made
up of lawyers, judges and members of the public, does not discipline jurists
for legal errors. Some complaints cite behavior that is not misconduct, such as
asking a litigant questions during a small-claims hearing.
The point of making public the
circumstances behind confidential rebukes, the report said, was to educate the
public and "assist judges in avoiding inappropriate conduct."
The
California State Bar/The Model Problem
https://attorneybusters.com/the-california-state-bar/
(Mother Black
Widow & Babies)
The State Bar of California is touted as being
the model and mother for other bars across the country, and there lies the
problem in its “Motherly Model” form.
Once you strip away the pretentious titles used to describe the
various self- elected positions, Office of Chief Trial Counsel, Board of
Governors, etc., it is just a club with forced membership and dues.
The State of California by law, requires all attorneys practicing
law in the state to be members of the California State Bar.
The State Bar of California, then in
return for the favor of forced membership and dues, is required to act as the
“administrative arm” of the California Supreme Court.
And what is supposed to be the chief purpose of administration? To
administrate a Self-Disciplinary program of its member attorneys.
What this has led to
in its “Model” form is a smoke screen to frustrate individuals that have a problem
with an attorney, and to keep attorneys out of harm’s way from the general
public.
A general public that has many valid reasons to be ticked off at
them.
The State Bar of California has
important sounding titles for their fellow attorney members that discipline
each other.
They call themselves
judges (not judges elected by the public), and governors (not elected by the
public), and court committees (not the public court), and appointees to the
court (not the public court, but their own internal court).
For the purpose of discussion, lets call the State Bar of California, “The Club”.
“The Club” has proud names for “member only services” that are used to
help discipline themselves, such as, “The Ethics Hotline”.
On the surface, this sounds fine and noble, however, once the fog
lifts, you realize a more accurate title would be, “Ethics, I Don’t Think I Have Any,
Can You Tell Me What They Are?” or “Ethics, Not Lately, I Think I’m In
Trouble”.
But, the titles would be too long and they wouldn’t sound as good.
Plus, some of us of lesser intelligence that need protection from
ourselves (according to the attorneys) might actually catch on to their secret “members only” code names.
Let’s look at the Ethics Hotline. This is a toll free
number “FOR
ATTORNEYS ONLY” that an attorney can call to see if
either something they did, or plan to do, could get them a warning letter from
“The Club”.
The “Ethics Hotline” is courteous as to
provide for attorneys that do not wish to use their own names, the ability to
use “pseudonyms” (an “alias” for us simple folk). The “Ethics Hotline” will even arrange a call back appointment (for the attorneys to
call back) when they don’t want to leave their number.
This is not a joke!!
“The Club” is working to provide their
members the first level of defense when they are pursued by a client. “The Club” will tell the attorney what things they can cite to deter “The Club” from “getting” them if they do have a complaint filed against
them.
“The Club” (State Bar if you have
forgotten) of course says this is how its members are better disciplined by
knowing what ethics are.
However, Attorney Busters.com believes that
if an attorney hasn’t figured out what ethics are by the time they take their
state bar exam, they simply don’t want to know.
There are several CD’s available concerning what you should look
for in an attorney and what to do if you’ve got a problem with one.
In order to post a complaint about a bad experience you or a friend
has had with a bar association go to the Cobweb.
Hackers Expose Attorney Corruption At State Bar
Hackers Expose Attorney Corruption At State Bar
Hackers Expose Attorney Corruption At
State Bar
8/31/2017
State Bar Leader Bites the Dust After Cover- Up
Russia, Clinton Emails, Isis and now California's State Bar.
Hackers may truly be responsible for changing the world and many Silicon Valley
Hackers are now turning to clean up California's Courts.
Confidential State
Bar communications indicate that dating
back to 2014, State Bar employees and
contractors; Braulio Munoz, Gregory Dresser, Sherrie Mc Letchie , Lori
Wallerstein and James Towery, willfully
engaged in misconduct at the State Bar that
compromised the private and confidential
records of private citizens who filed complaints against attorneys,
including the social security numbers and home addresses of individuals who attempted to complaint about
unethical lawyers.
Rindskopf, the Bar's latest leader to flee the rapidly
deteriorating lawyer watchdog agency, is reportedly aware the Bar released the private social security numbers,
home addresses , IRS information, credit card and banking records of private
citizens who sought to address bad attorneys, and that the State Bar never
notified these individuals of the release.
Emails and notes
obtained by members of Silicon Valley's most elite hackers show that Rindskopf
has told those closest to her that she is leaving the State Bar after only two
years, before a hurricane of
investigations results in indictments
and criminal charges for many past and present employees, lawyers and judges.
Some of the records leaked to the press from Anonymous
indicate that the Bar repeatedly covered up attorney misconduct and
ignored clear and convincing
evidence that showed former Chief Trial Counsel James Towery threw
Joe Dunn under the bus when Dunn refused Towery's request to cease
investigating lawyers in Santa Clara
County, where Towery was appointed as a judge
following his departure from the Bar.
State Bar Compliant files also show that the state's legal
system has become outright corrupt , as it has allowed large law firms and
individual lawyers off the disclosure hook, while judges award these same
unethical firms and lawyers millions in sanctions and fees awards every year.
The records obtained also show that James Towery failed to
make lawful disclosures himself, while working at the State Bar, and while
acting as a judge in Santa Clara County.
Towery's former law firm , Hoge and Fenton, is
reported to have essentially bought the employment position for their
partner , which in return promised
"protection " for Hoge Fenton lawyers, and lawyers inside the Santa
Clara County prosecutor's office, where Towery's wife was employed. Additionally problematic was the fact
that Towery and his wife, Karen Sinunu
Towery saw to it that millions of State
Bar grants went to fund questionable non profits and programs associated with
Santa Clara County University's law programs.
Bar communications also show that Rindskopf is extremely
worried about Hayward v. Superior court. Rindskopf privately admitted, the Bar
clearly first ignored a complaint against Nancy Perkovich before the Hayward
case was decided, and is now scrambling to discipline Perkovich, who is facing
a civil suit for driving one divorce case to incur over $3,000,000 in fees
where Perkovich did nothing for the millions she charged in attorney fees and
costs.
The Hayward case indicates that orders made by attorneys
acting as private judges could mean the voiding of orders in thousands of
California divorce cases, but also the voiding of the orders that were related
to the formation of Facebook, which
could be problematic for Facebook shareholders all over the world.
The Hayward case could additionally entangle
attorneys who acted as private judges, or minor's counsel, in divorce
and large complex civil litigation matters, where lawyers like; Perkovich, Richmond, Hales, Cox,
Crawford, Nat Hales, , Robert
Blevans, Richard Roggia, Brad Baugh,
Valerie Houghton, Tom Tuttle,
Seastrom and Hammon have been known to be making millions off creating
misery of divorce litigants as these
unscrupulous lawyers have made billions of California divorce, probate and
custody cases.
For employees, shareholders and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg
and Sheryl Sandberg, the issues in Santa Clara County family courts may be far
more important then they once believed.
State Bar memos indicate that Jim Towery pressured employees to bury complaints that would have
shown fraud and outright criminal
conduct that could land , now judge,
James Towery, right in jail based on his involvement in Mark Zuckerberg's lawsuit with the
Winklevosses, that ultimately got Facebook anchored in California.
The use of Facebook in legal matters has become an
increasing matter of public interest. In family courts judges are using
Facebook to hold mothers and fathers in contempt of court after they are
stalked on Facebook by their ex spouse and
on (www.dailybusinessreview.com/id=1202796261138/Judges-Facebook-Friendship-With-Attorney-Doesnt-Require-Recusal-Court-Rules)
, August 23, 2017, a Florida's Supreme Court just ruled that a Judge "friending
" a lawyer on Facebook does not require recusal from cases where that
lawyer appears before her. Many litigants now believe that makes Facebook fair
game to stalk judges and lawyers for information to use against them when
filling complaints and reporting judge crimes.
California's State Bar misusing personal information of
private people who file complaints against unethical lawyers must be addressed
urgently by the state's legislature.
State Bar records, obtained by a core group of elite Hackers in
Silicon Valley, show that judges in Santa Clara, Sacramento and Contra Costa
and Orange Counties regularly refused discipline attorney misconduct over the past
30 years, as Canon 3 of California's Judicial Code of Ethics makes mandatory, and the judicial failures have now
seeped into the state's attorney discipline agencies, in a manner that allows
corruption to flourish in the state's courts.
Members of the Public
who filed complaints against an attorney and provided the Bar with
records, or information, that contained social security numbers, bank account numbers or IRS information, are advised to contact :
caljohnqpublic@gmail.com to see if your personal information is in the records
the Bar has carelessly disseminated to the public when handling complaints about attorney misconduct.
The Bar should have only
one purpose—to rid the profession of bad apples.
DENNIS H.
MANGERS, NON-ATTORNEY BOARD MEMBER OF THE CALIFORNIA BAR
These issues
seem to crop up every few years, but seldom with as much urgency as now. That's
because a 2015 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court has put professional licensing bodies on notice that
they could be guilty of antitrust violations if a majority of their
members are participants in the business they regulate.
The California State Bar is governed
by a 19-member board of trustees, 13 of whom are lawyers. You do the math.
The Court decision isn't the only driver
of potential change. "People can suffer irreparable harm from
attorneys," says Fellmeth, a lawyer. They can be deprived of their liberty
by inadequate representation in criminal court or immigration cases.
But the Supreme Court ruling sharpens
the argument for splitting the Bar in two — into a trade association with
voluntary membership, and a government body controlled by non-lawyers and
responsible for professional licensing and discipline, much as medical
professional standards are overseen by the Medical Board of California and
political advocacy is left to the independent California Medical Association.
A measure passed by the State Assembly in June 2 would
place the "deunification" of the Bar firmly on the front
burner. The bill would create a commission to reconsider the Bar's governing
structure and report back to the legislature by April. The bill also would
restructure the Bar board as a 13-member body with at least seven
non-lawyer members — an effort to comply with the Supreme Court's 2015
ruling.
Deunification is "the only real
solution to the state bar's chronic dysfunction," says Dennis H. Mangers,
a non-attorney Bar trustee who has submitted just such a proposal to the
legislature. "The Bar should have only one purpose — to rid the
profession of bad apples."
That function often takes a back seat
to the policy and social purposes that make the Bar resemble more a
professional club than a regulator, according to critics. In legislative
testimony last April, Fellmeth observed that the Bar sponsors 30 different
programs offering professional services to its members, often at a group
discount, including financial advice, insurance, consumer products and
software. "No other occupational licensing agency offers any of these
goods and services to its licensees," he said.
The Bar tends to hold itself exempt
from state rules applied to other state agencies on grounds that it's
an arm of the State Supreme Court; critics say it still regularly violates the
Bagley-Keene Open Meeting Act, which requires at least 10 days public
notice of any meetings and forbids members to discuss business with each other
except in an open forum, despite a measure passed last year bringing it under
Bagley-Keene's jurisdiction.
Elizabeth Rindskopf Parker, the former dean of
McGeorge School of Law who took over as executive director of the Bar last
September, T described herself as "agnostic" on
deunification. The organization hasn't taken a formal position.
But Parker argues that "as
officers of the court, lawyers have responsibility for the good features
of our rule-of-law system." Their duties include "making sure the
legal system is functioning well" along with "educating and informing
the public and the legislature on technical issues in the law."
Breaking up the Bar, she says, could
hamper programs to improve access to the courts for underprivileged clients,
since these are funded from mandatory fee revenue that might not flow from a
voluntary organization with a smaller membership. Still, she acknowledged that
all these functions might be accomplished via "a different set of
structural arrangements" than the present.
lightening penalties, but the backlog of cases has been creeping back up.
State Auditor Elaine M. Howle has been
turning up the heat. In a report last year, she ripped
into the disciplinary system, especially the
Bar's ham-handed management of a crippling backlog of nearly 5,200 cases
in 2010: it reduced the backlog by two-thirds the following year mostly by
settling cases hastily with light penalties. (Backlogged cases are those in
which no action has been taken for six months or more.)
Some had to be reexamined; of 27
settlements rejected by the State Supreme Court, the ultimate arbiter of lawyer
discipline, 21 had to be renegotiated with harsher punishments, including five
disbarments. About 10% of the attorneys who were allowed to continue practicing
after the settlements faced new complaints subsequently, and 28 were eventually
disbarred.
Howle found that the Bar was
squandering resources that should have been spent on hiring more enforcement
staff. In 2012, the organization spent $76.6 million to buy and refurbish a Los
Angeles office building to supplement its San Francisco headquarters
— about twice what it spent on discipline that year.
Meanwhile, the case backlog was
creeping back up — from 1,742 in 2011 to 2,174 in 2014. Bar officials say the
backlog was reduced by about 24% last year, but they warn that further
reductions will require as many as 48 more lawyers and investigators, in
addition to the 118 employed at the end of last year.
The California State Bar Has No Clue What It’s Doing
California has a plan to help the people who
failed the bar exam... and obviously it makes no sense.
May
24, 2018 a
California just
posted its worst bar exam
passage rate in 70 years, and somehow that’s not the dumbest news we have about them this
week. As California continues its draconian, trade restricting bar grading
policy — despite the
pleas of academics, common sense, and a comprehensive scientific study —
and pawn off the blame for its own market manipulation on “students must be
getting dumber” nonsense, it turns out the California Bar is truly the dumbest
of them all.
An essay on
Medium, penned by a graduate who unfortunately failed the February exam,
unleashes a hilarious
broadside against the tinpot bureaucracy behind the exam. To
set the scene, those who didn’t pass the exam were notified on May 18 with the
following message of encouragement:
In order to help improve performance on the bar exam, we recently
launched the Productive Mindset Intervention Program. Through this program and
ongoing study, we hope to better understand the downward trend of bar exam pass
rates.
The Productive Mindset Intervention Program will be available to
applicants beginning with the July 2018 Bar Exam. This program is a partnership
with researchers at Stanford University, the University of Southern California,
and Indiana University. The program is designed to improve exam performance
across the board.
But, as the
essayist learned, while this graduate-focused initiative sounds wonderful, it’s
also run by the California State Bar, so….
Well, gee. This program sounds really great! You may be
wondering, as I was, “How do I sign up?” The answer is: You can’t! Haha!
No, seriously. You can no longer sign up for the program that,
according to the Executive Director of the State Bar of California on May 18th,
had just been “recently launched” for the July 2018 exam. I found this out by
calling the Los Angeles Office of Admissions and asking for information on how
to enroll in the program. I was told that the deadline for enrollment was May
14th, 2018. Some might find that an odd date to choose, as it is four days
before the Bar Exam results were released. Meaning that anyone who had failed
the February administration and would be registering for the July exam had
missed the enrollment deadline for a program designed to improve their
performance in July.
Yes, the
California Bar used their failure notifications to pimp a program that they
knew none of those graduates could enroll in. Let that sink in. Because the
author of this essay has let it sink in and remains… perplexed:
Much angrier now, I demanded to have the names of the persons in
charge of running the “Productive Mindset Intervention Program,” and for their
contact information. If you’re reading this and you’re wearing a hat, I would
advise holding onto it before proceeding on and reading the response I
received. The words that stumbled out of the man on the other line’s mouth were
“no one has been appointed for that yet.”
No one. Has been appointed. For that. Yet.
In a sense, this is the perfect metaphor for the California Bar
— there’s literally no one minding the wheel. When the law school deans rolled
into the California Supreme Court with empirical data and asked that body to
exercise a little of its theoretical oversight authority to fix the problem,
the Court rolled over like
we should have always expected.
That’s
exactly the sort of service you expect from a test that brings in roughly
$12,040,000 every year in fees! And they’d have even more if they could find a
way to charge for this Productive Mindset Intervention Program… but that would
require getting people enrolled first.
Check out
the full essay for
a thorough rundown of everything these people have done to screw over young
lawyers — often along racial and gender lines — for years. And it’ll probably
keep doing this for years to come.
Because no
one is running this show.
State Audit:
California Bar Put Public at 'Significant Risk'
By Bigad Shaban, Liza Meak and Mark Villarreal
Published Feb 23, 2016
A recent state audit
raises serious questions about the California state bar's ability to protect
consumers. The state bar is in charge of investigating and disciplining
attorneys, but a 75-page state audit found major problems
with the way the bar worked to clear a huge backlog of disciplinary cases
against thousands of attorneys. The result, according to the California State
Auditor's Office's, was "the State Bar allowed some attorneys whom it
otherwise might have disciplined more severely – or even disbarred – to
continue practicing law, at significant risk to the public."
According to the audit,
the backlog of disciplinary cases topped 5,174 cases in 2010, "prompting
the state bar to take steps to quickly reduce it." While the state bar
managed to decrease the backlog by 66 percent within a year, the audit revealed
that "speedier resolutions" came at a cost as the State Bar began
issuing less severe punishments to attorneys. As a result, the Bar dismissed more
cases and settled others with written reprimands that may stay hidden in a
lawyer's discipline file.
"That's working
your numbers to try and look good, even when you're potentially hurting
consumers," said Ed Howard, an attorney with the Center for Public
Interest Law, a government watchdog group that monitors state boards and
agencies.
"The state bar
does not do in any way shape or form, the kind of job – when it comes to
disciplining lawyers – that Californians deserve and Californians expect,"
said Howard, who has previously testified before the California legislature to
voice his criticism of the California Bar.
State Bar:
"Unviable" Policies Caused "Crisis”
"We need to get
our house in order," said Leah Wilson, the newly named Chief Operating
Officer of the California Bar.
Wilson acknowledged the
problems facing the bar, and said a 2011 policy requiring a
"zero-backlog" of complaints was to blame for the Bar's ultimate
failure in adequately disciplining attorneys.
"That focus on
backlog reduction, absent the infusion of significant resources, was bound to
result in that type of crisis that you saw reflected in the audit," Wilson
said. "It just was just an unviable situation."
The audit found that
"since 2007, the State Bar has changed its backlog goal four times: from
200, to 250, to zero, to less than 15 percent of all active cases (its current
goal). While the State Bar has met its current backlog goal since it was
implemented in 2011, the audit found that the backlog of complaints has
increased each year since that time, "indicating that the goal may not be
effective in reducing the overall backlog."
While Wilson said the
bar agreed with the audit's recommendations, she was only hired five months ago
– after the audit was released – and repeatedly told the Investigative Unit she
could not answer certain questions concerning the audit's findings.
"I don't want to
speak for what happened when I wasn't here," she said. "We're going
to focus on fixing the underlying structural problems or conditions that caused
that problem to occur."
Wilson said approval
from supervising attorneys is now required before most disciplinary cases
against attorneys can be settled. The state bar is also in the process of
trying to determine how to best restructure its staff to adequately handle
complaints while also minimizing its backlog. According to Wilson, that plan
will be presented to the state legislature in May.
Woman Blames Former
Attorney For Leaving Her Bankrupt
Katherine Roberts says
the additional oversight should have been in place long ago, and if it were,
that might have helped her with her former attorney Drexel Bradshaw. She says
her legal troubles began in 2004 after trying to fight an eviction from her San
Francisco home.
"I ended up in one
day losing my apartment and being a half million dollars in debt," Roberts
said. "It's been extraordinarily painful."
Katherine
Roberts poses in front of her former San Francisco home in this 2002 photo.
Photo credit: Jym Dyer
Photo credit: Jym Dyer
She eventually sued
Bradshaw for, among other things, legal malpractice and breach of fiduciary
duty. In 2010, a jury found that Bradshaw's abilities as a lawyer were
"below the applicable standard" and determined his actions resulted
in a financial loss to Roberts of more than $250,000. Roberts ultimately
settled with Bradshaw out of court for an undisclosed amount.
Through his attorney,
Bradshaw declined to comment.
The objections over
Bradshaw's work don't end there. The local bar association in San Francisco
received "a number of complaints from [Bradshaw's] clients," and in a
highly unusual move, filed a complaint with the state bar, citing details from
seven of Bradshaw's former clients, including Katherine Roberts. The complaint
raised concerns that Bradshaw may have stolen money from at least one client
and engaged in "unconscionable billing practices."
"That's how
strongly we believed something had to be done," said Richard Zitrin, one
of the volunteer attorneys with the San Francisco bar who filed the complaint
against Bradshaw. "I just hate seeing people like this get away with
things, when they shouldn't."
State Bar Accuses
Attorney of "Corruption”
The state bar attempted
to take action against Bradshaw with a 62-page complaint, accusing him of
"corruption," "dishonesty," "and gross
negligence." It went to court as two separate cases. The first was
dismissed in 2009 and the second one doesn't show up on the state bar's
website.
"Somehow, at the
end of the day, this file got made secret," said Zitrin. "The state
bar messed up the prosecution and [Bradshaw] wound up just walking away."
Zitrin, who is also a
legal ethics professor of nearly 40 years, believed the State Bar ultimately
gave Bradshaw a disciplinary slap on the wrist by giving him a low-level
reprimand. In legal terms it's called a reproval, but Zitrin said the bar
violated its own policies by not making it public.
"The state bar
doesn't want to admit it made a mistake by secretizing a reproval that, under
its own rules, it didn't have the right to do," Zitrin said.
State Bar: No
"public records" available
State Chief Operating
Officer, Leah Wilson said there are no "public records" available for
the outcome of the case.
"There was a
settlement agreement and the content of that agreement and the outcome are not
public," Wilson said.
But what is public is
Bradshaw's criminal record. The Investigative Unit discovered Bradshaw is a
convicted felon. In 1991, he pleaded guilty in Virginia to grand larceny by
check, which does not prevent someone from practicing law, however, Bradshaw
lied about his criminal record six years in a row in signed documents he
submitted to the San Francisco Bar.
On the state bar's
website, however, Bradshaw's discipline record is clean – not a single
infraction is listed.
"I think the
system is just horribly broken and it's breaking other people," Roberts
said. "It's breaking people down."
California State Bar Accused of Fraud and
Corruption by Former Bar CEO
http://www.capoliticalreview.com/capoliticalnewsandviews/california-state-bar-accused-of-fraud-and-corruption-by-former-bar-ceo/
The attorneys in
California are almost all members of the State Bar. The Bar has ethics panels
to see if each attorney is working within the oath they took to become an
attorney. Now we find those running the California State Bar fire
whistleblowers—even those running the organization. We also know that the
statistics kept by the California State Bar are as accurate and honest as a
document from the Obama White House.
“Dunn claims he was targeted after he
discovered that the bar’s chief trial counsel, Jayne Kim, removed 269
backlogged cases from official reports released to the public in order to make
her office appear more productive.
Jay, the newly named defendant, is the former principal attorney to the Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court.
“Consistent with her historical pattern of interfering with state bar affairs without any constitutional, statutory, or other authority,” Dunn claims, Jay met with certain members of the bar’s board of trustees to urge Dunn’s termination by spreading “blatantly false information” about him.”
Jay, the newly named defendant, is the former principal attorney to the Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court.
“Consistent with her historical pattern of interfering with state bar affairs without any constitutional, statutory, or other authority,” Dunn claims, Jay met with certain members of the bar’s board of trustees to urge Dunn’s termination by spreading “blatantly false information” about him.”
Some of this appears to
be criminal. When will the Attorney General shut down this criminal enterprise?
The people of California deserve better—instead we get the California State
Bar, important people that protect themselves from the law.
Dunn Adds Fuel to Case Against CA State Bar
By KATHERINE PROCTOR,
Courthouse News, 5/5/15
LOS ANGELES (CN) –
Former state Sen. Joseph
Dunn amended his whistleblower lawsuit to name
a new
defendant, Beth Jay, in his claim that the
State Bar of California fired him as
its executive
director for exposing “serious ethical breaches,
prosecutorial
lapses, and fiscal improprieties.”
Dunn claims he was targeted after he discovered that the bar’s chief trial counsel, Jayne Kim, removed 269 backlogged cases from official reports released to the public in order to make her office appear more productive.
Jay, the newly named defendant, is the former principal attorney to the Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court.
“Consistent with her historical pattern of interfering with state bar affairs without any constitutional, statutory, or other authority,” Dunn claims, Jay met with certain members of the bar’s board of trustees to urge Dunn’s termination by spreading “blatantly false information” about him.
Dunn alleges that Jay met repeatedly with Kim, Craig Holden (the bar’s newly installed president, who is also named as a defendant) and Jim Fox to set into motion plans for Dunn’s termination. The meetings “culminated in Kim filing a frivolous and unsubstantiated grievance against Sen. Dunn,” the amended complaint states.
The former Democratic state senator also claims that Jay was directly involved in and copied on the grievance, which he was never given the opportunity to review or to answer.
“Beth Jay’s involvement played a substantial role in the ultimate decision to terminate Sen. Dunn,” the amended complaint states.
In addition, Dunn accuses Holden of engaging in a “campaign to derail the sale of the state bar’s San Francisco headquarters.”
“Specifically, it has been learned that Holden has a plan to lien the San Francisco property, falsely claiming urgent needs to make property improvement and repairs, that is in effect nothing more than a poison pill plan to scuttle any sale of the property which could have led to the state bar realizing millions of dollars in equity which could be used to defray membership costs and to support its core functions,” Dunn claims.
In November, the State Bar of California issued a statement that called Dunn’s lawsuit “baseless.”
Both sides will be heard on Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court.
In a telephone interview, Holden said that Dunn’s “eleventh-hour” filing of the amended complaint was an effort to derail the hearing.
Dunn is represented by Mark Geragos in Los Angeles.
STATE BAR BURNS
DOCUMENTS TO COVER UP ATTORNEY CORRUPTION AND JUDGE CRIMES
State Bar Cursed - Still Covering Up for James Towery
Ironically, as can be seen in the Bar's own email noted
above , James Towery, former Chief Trial
Counsel of the State Bar was among the victims of the Bar's reckless handling of private and confidential
information. Towery appears to be the only victim who was directly called by
the Bar. Other victims have had their personal information released by the Bar,
as early as 2015, but have never been contacted or informed their private
information had been compromised.
Several victims claim to have experienced fraud and identity
theft ever since providing personal and confidential information to the Bar
when complaining about attorney misconduct.
In addition to compromising private and confidential information of persons and businesses
victimized by bad lawyers. The State Bar
also appears to have released internal emails that show employees of the
Bar attempted to commit fraud on the
State Auditor , Elaine Howle during a 2015 audit.
Since James Towery was Chief Trail Counsel at the Bar from
2010 -2011, policies and procedures appear to have been in place that
allowed lawyers to continue to harm the
public. As far back as 2010 , the Bar
has reportedly hired thugs to stalk,
harass and intimidate people who have filed complaints against California lawyers
Employees and lawyers at the Bar are additionally aware of millions of dollars bad
lawyers have stolen through trust account abuse, which the Bar never
investigated or prosecuted. Bar staff are also reported to have pressured prosecutors in Santa Clara,
Contra Costa, Napa, Sacramento and Orange County to ignore judge and lawyer
crimes, in return for immunity from investigations of DA offices.
The Bar also appears to have tried to conceal that James
Towery never lawfully reported his financial interests on his form 700. One Bar
employee reports the Bar's top brass told employees not to worry about Towery's
failure to lawfully disclose as he acted in the Bar's most powerful position,
and where he was later appointed to the Santa Clara County bench by Governor
Brown in 2011.
State Bar disaster continues as California politicians ponder fate
State Bar disaster continues as California politicians ponder fate
It’s been painfully evident for
years, if not decades, that the State Bar – the quasi-public organization that
licenses lawyers and is supposed regulate their conduct – is an institutional
disaster zone.
Multiple reports by outside auditors about its managerial shortcomings,
regulatory backlogs and financial irregularities, very public exchanges of
charges and countercharges by State Bar officials, and dueling lawsuits all
attest to the mess.
Five
years ago, the Legislature ordered the State Bar to create a “Public Interest
Task Force” to delve into its problems and recommend reforms.
It took four years just for the panel to be
convened – itself a testament to the State Bar’s innate dysfunction. This week,
however, its conclusions emerged, along with a minority report
that says the draft is too weak, ducking the mandate to recommend “meaningful
solutions.”
By its own words, the majority
didn’t offer concrete reforms because it didn’t want to interject itself in an
intense, backroom debate in the Capitol over the State Bar’s fate.
When the State Bar sought its
usual bill authorizing it to charge lawyers “dues” to cover its expenses, the
Assembly rebelled and made dues contingent on a series of reforms – including,
oddly enough, creating another commission to study its operations and recommend
changes.
However, the bill stalled in the Senate Judiciary
Committee, in part because Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye didn’t like its
provisions. The Supreme Court wields the ultimate authority on disciplining
lawyers. And the bill remains in limbo as the Legislature begins the last month
of its biennial session.
Both factions of the task force
agree “that significant changes are needed” to make the State Bar an effective
agency.
However, the majority just
suggests alternatives for possible change while the minority focuses on what
should be obvious to anyone: The organization’s dysfunction stems directly from
its dual functions as a regulatory agency charged with protecting the public
from incompetent or venal attorneys and as a trade association that promotes
lawyers’ professional and economic interests.
“We conclude that the only answer
to the Bar’s persistent dysfunction is to de-couple its regulatory and
professional association functions,” the minority says.
The State Bar’s structural and
operational maladies are not only well documented, but continue even as
legislators and others ponder its future.
This week, the Los Angeles
Business Journal reported that the State Bar has selected a new contractor to
clean up a multi-million-dollar, malfunctioning internal computer system after
dumping the original contractor for “seriously flawed” work.
This week, too, the Los Angeles
Daily Journal reported on new suits being filed relating to the messy departure
of Joe Dunn, the state’s former executive director – a continuation of charges
and countercharges of malfeasance and corruption that have rattled the
organization for months.
The time for more study is long
past. The time for action, leading to the de-coupling of the State Bar’s
incompatible functions and other structural reforms, is now.
bench by Governor
Brown in 2011.
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