At the joint meeting on August 14, 2025, the Board of Trustees and the Committee of Bar Examiners set the new fees for the PLP. Please find them below.

Image

A PLL must: 

• Expressly refer to themselves orally and in writing as a Provisionally Licensed Lawyer and/or participant in the State Bar’s Provisional Licensure Program and not describe themselves as a fully licensed lawyer or imply in any way orally or in writing that they are a fully licensed lawyer. 

• Follow the same professional conduct rules as all fully licensed lawyers. 

• Agree to be subject to the disciplinary authority of the Supreme Court of California and the State Bar with respect to the laws and rules governing the conduct of lawyers. 

• Attest that they will not practice California law other than under the supervision of an approved Supervising Lawyer during the time they are provisionally licensed. 

• Be employed by or volunteering at the firm (as defined in rule 9.49) where the Supervising Lawyer works, which must have an office located in California. 

• Immediately report the termination of supervision by their Supervising Lawyer to the State Bar.

You must file an application with the court to appear on behalf of the client in the related case. Please refer to rule 9.40(c) of the California Rules of Court. The filing submitted to the court must include a copy of a proof of service showing that all parties and the State Bar of California have been served. You must also remit the fee to the State Bar of California with a copy of the application.

The application must state: 

• The applicant's residence and office address; 

• The courts to which the applicant has been admitted to practice and the dates of admission; 

• That the applicant is a licensee in good standing in those courts; 

• That the applicant is not currently suspended or disbarred in any court; 

• The title of each court and cause in which the applicant has filed an application to appear as counsel pro hac vice in California in the preceding two years, the date of each application, and whether or not it was granted; and 

• The name, address, and telephone number of the active licensee of the State Bar of California who is the attorney of record.

No. You must contact the federal court clerk to ascertain if the filing must be served on a specific custodial record keeper.

At the time the application becomes available, applicants can check their eligibility to apply for the Pathway PLP through the Applicant Portal under the status tab. Only applicants who meet the qualification, specifically those who achieved a score between 1390 and 1439 at first read or as a total scaled score for any California Bar Exam between July 2015 and February 2020, will be granted access to the PLP application.

• Interest on Lawyers’ Trust Accounts, commonly known as IOLTA, is a tool for raising money to increase access to justice by funding legal services for indigent Californians.
• Rule 1.15 of the California Rules of Professional Conduct requires that attorneys who handle money belonging to their clients—including settlement checks, fee advances for services not yet performed, or money to pay court fees—deposit the funds in one or more clearly identifiable trust accounts. If the amount is large or the funds are to be held for a long period of time, the attorney must place the money in an interest-bearing account for the benefit of the client. However, if the client funds are nominal or will be held only for a short time, then they are pooled in a single account with similar funds of other clients. The latter type of account is an IOLTA account.
• The interest generated by the IOLTA accounts is collected by the State Bar’s Legal Services Trust Fund Program and distributed to more than 100 nonprofit legal aid organizations that provide civil legal aid to indigent Californians.

No. Entry into the Pathway PLP is only permitted for those who scored between 1390 and 1439 on a bar exam from July 2015 through February 2020. Program participants do not need to retake a bar exam if they complete 300 hours of supervised legal practice in the Pathway PLP and fulfill all other requirements of the rule.

Please review the Moral Character Statement and the Moral Character Determination Guidelines.

Yes. The moral character application requires disclosure of all civil actions, including but not limited to divorce, dissolution, and class action cases in which you were a named plaintiff or defendant.

Contact the citing or arresting agency to obtain a copy of a law enforcement report and contact the court where the related proceedings were held to obtain a copy of the charging document, court docket, and judgment (please see Form 2 for the complete list of required documents). You must contact each agency to determine whether records may be requested or obtained online, in person, or through the mail. The identity of the citing or arresting agency may sometimes be found in related court documents. The prosecutor’s office, such as the District Attorney or City Attorney, may be able to assist in identifying the court in which certain proceedings were held.

A nonjudicial punishment, court-martial, resignation in lieu of court-martial, administrative discharge, or a discharge that is not “honorable” may be relevant to a moral character determination, but it does not automatically exclude an applicant for admission to practice law in California.

You must disclose your current employer, even if it is not law-related, and you have not been there for at least six months.

You are not required to disclose to a potential employer. The moral character application requires you to disclose any employment, past or present, lasting more than six months, and any law-related employment, regardless of its duration. 

If you obtain new employment while your moral character application is pending or after you have received a positive moral character determination, but before you take the attorney’s oath, you must provide the new employment information to the State Bar within 30 days.

You must disclose all residences for the past eight years, regardless of how long you resided at the location.

Post the completed Live Scan Form to your moral character case feed. Do not submit the Live Scan Form as a General Request or as a Fingerprint Request, or there may be a delay in processing.

The CTAPP reporting deadline is the same as the licensee’s deadline for paying their license fees (Rule 2.5(C) of the Rules of the State Bar). The annual renewal cycle deadline is March 30. This is also the deadline for other requirements (e.g., MCLE compliance, etc.). (Rule 2.11 of the Rules of the State Bar.) For new attorneys, the deadline is 45 days from the invoice date for their fees (Rule 2.12 of the Rules of the State Bar).

If a lawyer is a signatory on a trust account, exercises managerial or primary administrative oversight for a trust account, or is otherwise responsible for complying with any of the requirements or prohibitions in rule 1.15 of the Rules of Professional Conduct—other than the disclosure and agreement requirements in rule 1.15(b) pertaining to depositing a flat fee paid in advance into a lawyer’s or law firm’s operating account—the lawyer is responsible for those funds. The lawyer remains responsible even if other lawyers are also responsible for the safekeeping of funds. The lawyer is ultimately responsible even if nonlawyers are assigned certain accounting tasks for those funds; for example, bookkeeping and banking related to client trust accounts. (See Rules Prof. Conduct, rule 5.3.)

Accounting and recordkeeping activities are only one part of a lawyer’s duties to properly handle entrusted funds. Other duties include, for example, the responsibility for giving notice to the client or other person that funds were received on behalf of the client or other person and identifying and resolving disputes about entitlement to trust funds. These duties ordinarily are not the job of a firm’s bookkeeper. All of these responsibilities are considered nondelegable duties. The proactive regulation, reporting, and monitoring of CTAPP are intended to promote a lawyer’s compliance and prevent avoidable financial harm to clients. The only aspect of CTAPP reporting that can be fulfilled by the lawyer’s firm is the annual registration of client trust accounts by a firm or organization that is registered with the State Bar’s Agency Billing platform.

A licensee is “responsible for client funds and funds entrusted by others under the provisions of rule 1.15 of the Rules of Professional Conduct” within the meaning of this rule if, at any point during the reporting period, they acted as a signatory on a trust account—even if there was no money in the account, exercised managerial or primary administrative oversight for a trust account, or were otherwise responsible for complying with any of the requirements or prohibitions in rule 1.15 of the Rules of Professional Conduct—other than the disclosure and agreement requirements in rule 1.15(b) pertaining to depositing a flat fee paid in advance into a lawyer’s or law firm’s operating account. The requirements and prohibitions in rule 1.15 are not limited to banking and recordkeeping duties and include, for example, the responsibility for giving notice to the client or other person that funds were received on behalf of the client or other person and the duty to identify and discharge liens.

Lawyers who were responsible for entrusted funds in the reporting period must also register, or have their firm register through the State Bar’s Agency Billing application, all client trust accounts, take a self-assessment of client trust account management practices, and certify their compliance with requirements of rule 1.15 of the Rules of Professional Conduct.

If you need to disassociate a client trust account that is no longer active or held by a firm by which you are no longer employed or in practice with, you should:

1. Log in to your My State Bar Profile.
2. Navigate to the CTAPP reporting section.
3. Locate the account you wish to disassociate in your list of accounts.
4. Click on the plus sign (+) on the right-hand side of the screen to expand options.
5. Select the “Update Connection” tab on the account details pop-up.
6. Change the “Connection to Attorney” to “Disassociated/Added in Error.”
7. You will need to provide a disassociation reason and a disassociation effective date.
8. If you are reporting a disassociation effective date more than 30 days after the disassociation date, the system will prompt you for a reason why you are reporting it after the 30-day update deadline. At this time, there is no penalty for noncompliance with the 30-day update requirement. Answering this question truthfully will not result in an increased likelihood of a CTAPP compliance review or investigatory audit. The State Bar’s current focus is on gathering accurate information, educating licensees about their trust account responsibilities (including the 30-day update requirement), and improving overall compliance. There is a 50-character limit on this field.
9. Click the “Save” button.

This process removes the account from your profile for future reporting periods but maintains the historical record as required.

In general, under rule 1.15(a) of the Rules of Professional Conduct, a licensee’s trust accounts must be maintained in California, or, with the written consent of the client, in another jurisdiction where there is a substantial relationship between the client or the client’s business and that other jurisdiction. Therefore, if licensees are entitled to hold IOLTA accounts outside of California, they will need to register those accounts as non-CA IOLTA accounts by selecting “Add Account” in My State Bar Profile, or, if using the Agency Billing application, selecting “Manage Accounts.”

Pro bono opportunities vary depending on the needs of the client community. Examples of pro bono legal services to indigent clients may include, but are not limited to: 

• Representation (full or limited scope)
• Negotiation and settlement
• Screening and intake
• Brief service by phone or in person
• Legal information or “Know Your Rights” workshops
• Document preparation and review
• Legal research and writing
• Litigation support
• Legislative research and legal analysis