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A State Bar working group studying innovations that could increase access to justice for all Californians holds its first public meeting Thursday, January 14, 2021.
Today the State Bar released results of the October 2020 California Bar Exam and announced that 5,292 people (60.7 percent of applicants) passed the General Bar Exam. If those who passed satisfy all other requirements for admission, they will be eligible to be licensed by the State Bar to practice law in California. The October 2020 General Bar Exam pass rate is the highest in more than a decade, since July 2008.
At its meeting on November 19, the Board of Trustees set in motion a new commission to conduct an in-depth examination of the State Bar’s attorney discipline process system, a core function of the State Bar, and recommend how to further improve its effectiveness and fairness. The Board approved the charter and composition for the Ad Hoc Commission on the Discipline System.
Applications are now available online for 2020 law school graduates to seek provisional licensure, enabling those who have not passed a bar exam to practice law in California under the supervision of fully licensed lawyers. The initial group eligible for provisional licensure are those who graduated law school between December 1, 2019, and December 31, 2020.
The California Supreme Court and the State Bar are now accepting applications for their joint Blue Ribbon Commission on the Future of the California Bar Exam.
The California Supreme Court announced today that it approved the State Bar’s proposal for the provisional licensure of 2020 law school graduates. New Rule of Court 9.49 will be effective November 17, 2020, and the State Bar is slated to begin accepting applications on that day.
Today Associate Justice Joshua P. Groban of the California Supreme Court swore in Sean SeLegue as Chair of the State Bar Board Board of Trustees and Ruben Duran as Vice-Chair at the Board’s first meeting of the 2020-2021 Board year. Also sworn in was attorney Christine Gonong, appointed by the Court to a four-year term as a new Trustee, and attorney Hailyn Chen, reappointed by the Court for a second four-year term. New Trustee Arnie Sowell Jr., executive director of NextGen Policy, who was appointed by the Senate Rules Committee, was also sworn in by Justice Groban.
The State Bar has launched an innovative digital annual report spotlighting the agency’s accomplishments and progress in 2019, a pivotal year that featured measurable progress in meeting its expansive mission of public protection.
A State Bar Board of Trustees Zoom meeting on Friday, September 4, 2020, was disrupted when an individual flooded the chat function with a barrage of offensive, inappropriate text.
The State Bar of California has seized the unauthorized law practice of a Garden Grove man who defrauded Vietnamese immigrants. Toan Quy Thai, doing business as Pacific Immigration Law Office, was disbarred by the District of Columbia and the federal Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) in 2017. He has never been licensed to practice law in California.