Attorneys’ Disciplinary Charges
When a person is in dire need of professional advice to get out of legal troubles, they would expect to receive quality services in return especially if they hire an attorney in law. A member of the State Bar of California went through a rigorous education, passed a difficult bar exam, and pledged to follow the Rules of Professional Conduct 
at all times. But like in any industries, there are professionals that could not overcome the temptation of easy money and thus crosses the line jeopardizing their entire career. In news, you read about these professionals that rely on their licenses and degrees to work in a competitive field but due to their greed, their reputation and the career goes down the drain because of a bad move in their part. An easy route to make quick money does not exists unless you factor in illegal and fraudulent activities unless you invest lot of your own capital and loan to start/operate a business that sells a hot commodity.
So going back to the blog title, the State Bar of California introduces proposals and amendments to the practices of law. One recent proposal that came to my interest is titled Online Publication of Notice of Disciplinary Charges (NDC). In the State Bar website, the public general has access to view the license status and disciplinary charges (if any) of a member of a State Bar but an important information is missing.
Unfortunately, although the records and hearings relating to the disciplinary proceeding pending against an attorney in the State Bar Court are public, members of the public currently have extremely limited access to them.
The issue or a lack of information with the Attorney Search feature is that the public general do not have updated information on whether the attorney has a disciplinary proceedings pending against them. Everyone will at least once seek an attorney for legal counsel and when the time comes, you would want to hire the best attorney that your money can buy. No one wants to seek an attorney that have violated the attorney-client relationship. Imagine your privacy and confidential information being misused for unlawful purposes. There was a recent news article in the Korea Times where a group of Korean-American attorneys that practices law in Los Angeles County took advantage of a senior woman by transferring her real property deeds/ownership (located in South Korea) to a newly formed limited liability company (LLC) formed by the attorneys. There will be justice!
The due date to voice your comment is June 30, 2008 and send your e-mail to:
Itzel D. Berrio
The State Bar of California
Office of the Chief Trial Counsel
180 Howard St.
San Francisco, CA 94105
415-538-2541
415-538-2214 Fax
EDIT: Here is the e-mail response from Itzel Berrio.
David said,
August 25, 2008 @ 7:42 am
There are instances that some of them are really tempted to do some illegal acts for them to earn more money. This is in contradicting to what they have sworn and noted to the public after passing the Bar Examination. They must render and provide service to the people in good, honest, fair and justifiable way. What is the use of their career if it will be exploited? What is the value of their good image if they become a bad model to everyone? I hope their hard and strong determination to become a successful and truthful lawyer would result to meaningful and helpful activities for the people who are badly in need of it.
It is good that the government can protect the rights of the people who are victimized by those irresponsible and greed servants and for imposing legal and necessary acts for those people in such situations.
We must have information regarding their credibility through asking for a referral from a known government employee or through reading related articles and news for us to know the performance of that particular lawyer.
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October 3, 2008 @ 2:52 am
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