California Lawyer-Oversight Bill Leads To Attorney Fee Request

September 13, 2016 By
The California State Bar is supposed to protect consumers, but a recent state audit found the agency put people at “significant risk” after failing to keep watch over attorneys across California. NBC Bay Area Investigative Reporter Bigad Shaban reports in a story that first aired February 24, 2016. (Published Wednesday, Feb. 24, 2016)

The California State Bar is supposed to protect consumers, but a recent state audit found the agency put people at “significant risk” after failing to keep watch over attorneys across California. NBC Bay Area Investigative Reporter Bigad Shaban reports in a story that first aired February 24, 2016. (Published Wednesday, Feb. 24, 2016)

The NBC affiliate in California’s San Francisco area is reporting that the state bar of California is, for the first time in almost 20 years, asking the state Supreme Court for authority to collect attorneys’ dues. The report backgrounds that “… the announcement comes after a bill aimed at reforming the bar failed to pass through the state’s most recent legislative session… the bill, SB-846, sought to divide the bar into two agencies, since it currently serves as both a trade group for lawyers and a regulatory body that is supposed to discipline attorneys.”

The potential legislation comes amid concerns that the California bar should be run by people who do not practice law. The NBC report noted that “… the California State Bar has come under harsh criticism in recent months over mismanagement and misspending. Last week, the Investigative Unit revealed that a recent state audit shows the agency is overpaying its employees, all while the bar’s fund to repay victims of corrupt lawyers is millions of dollars short.”

The NBC affiliate, perhaps one of the most aggressive local news in the nation, said that the Investigative Unit revealed how the bar was accused of failing to keep watch over some of the state’s worst attorneys. According to a separate state audit released in June 2015, in trying to clear its backlog of consumer complaints against attorneys, the bar allowed some lawyers to continue practicing, even though they should have been disciplined or disbarred.

Source: Bill to Reform California State Bar Fails to Pass Through Legislature | NBC Bay Area http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Bill-to-reform-California-State-Bar-fails-to-pass-through-state-legislature-392199531.html#ixzz4K9qbxtjM
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Iowa Supreme Court Issues Order On Civil Courts Access

June 28, 2016 By

GavelThe Iowa Supreme Court has established a special commission to tackle the problem of too many people lacking civil court representation. The move follows an order saying that “… inability to afford the cost of legal representation and other barriers to access justice unfairly impact the lives of too many Iowans,”

The Des Moines Register backgrounds that “… this cost often forces people to proceed without the assistance of a lawyer and represent themselves in court,” a fact that the court also wrote “unfairly impacts the lives of too many Iowans.” Brett Torsdahl, executive director of the Iowa State Bar Association Public Service Project, said financial costs, language barriers and specific cases can make getting an attorney difficult and causes many citizens to try to tackle their cases by themselves.
Read the latest effort to contain civil justice rationing here:

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/crime-and-courts/2016/06/27/too-many-iowans-dont-have-access-legal-aid-high-court-says/86447376/

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Obama Does Congress’ Job on Immigration, is Immigration Court Reform Next?

November 21, 2014 By

Courts Monitor Publisher Sara Warner, writing at the Huffington Post “politics” page, notes that President Obama has stepped up to do Congress’ job on immigration; now, she wonders, will the president also address problems in his Justice Department’s immigration courts? With hundreds of thousands of cases pending and a federal investigation into nepotism, it would seem a good next step. Read it here.

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In Ferguson, Reform Begins With Courts

September 12, 2014 By
Confronting racial issues in Ferguson, Missouri – where the shooting of an unarmed black man by a white police officer sparked demonstrations – apparently begins with the courts system. Reports the Guardian newspaper “… some residents have described the courts regime as ‘taxation without representation’ and complained of a cycle of punishment in which they were fined for not making it to court appearances set during working hours that they tried unsuccessfully to reschedule.”
 
Actually, the newspaper reports that the offence of “failure to appear” is to be abolished under the new rules, along with a $50 ‘warrant recall’ fine and $15 in other fees imposed on people who can not make court dates. The city council says it wants to stop using the fines as a “source of general revenue” for the city, but critics say a plan to cap such fees to “15 percent of the city budget” would actually allow for increasing the payments. 

The report also noted that “… many people in the city, which has a two-thirds black population and a police force that is 94% white, complain that the law enforcement system disproportionately targets black residents. Figures published in 2013 by Missouri’s attorney general showed that seven black drivers were stopped by police in the city for every white driver.”

Read the story here:  Ferguson reform to courts system could leave residents paying more

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Jury Reform Ideas Beginning To Surface

October 2, 2013 By
With budget cutbacks and the threat of lawsuits over reduced justice access, you can guess that “court reform” is gathering steam as a key California issue. As part of that, you can add jury reform. Some ideas, and even proposed legislative action, are part of a Rosemary Jenkins column in CityWatch that very likely outlines the left-leaning view of future jury policy.

Jenkins, a regular CityWatch contributor who is also noted as chair of the Northeast Valley Green Coalition, spices up her policy observations with some first-person tales of jury duty. Her experience has the sound of truth, but it’s not exactly reassuring. She makes a case for non-citizens to serve on juries and calls for a new state law that will focus on “a jury of our peers” meaning more than just “those who did not evade jury duty.”

Of course, she is mostly dealing with criminal cases, not civil. But the jury pool overall is going to become an increasingly over-worked resource as more trials are held in centralized locations that require both seated and prospective jury members to travel longer distances. Read the ideas here.

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