No. All documentation and fees related to a PHV renewal must be submitted to the court and not the State Bar of California. Please contact the court if you have questions regarding PHV renewals.

Under rule 9.49.1, individuals who scored between 1390 and 1439 on a California Bar Exam administered between July 2015 and February 2020, as determined by the first read score or the final score, may apply so long as they:

• Have an active (unexpired) positive moral character determination or have submitted a complete Application for Determination of Moral Character. Whether the application is complete is determined by the State Bar.
• Have not received an adverse moral character determination, unless more than two years have elapsed from the date of the final determination. If, when the adverse moral character determination was issued, the Committee of Bar Examiners or the State Bar provided a time frame other than two years for when the participant was eligible to reapply, that other time frame shall control here.

The deadline to submit the Pathway PLP application is December 31, 2023. No applications will be accepted after the deadline. Applicants for the Pathway PLP must have 1) an active positive moral character determination, or 2) have submitted a moral character application that has not resulted in the issuance of an adverse moral character determination. If you have not submitted a moral character application and do not have an active positive determination, you must submit a moral character application no later than December 31, 2023. Please note that your PLP application will not be considered until the moral character application is deemed complete and filed by the State Bar. If you fail to submit a moral character application by December 31, 2023, your PLP application will not be processed.

Under the program for 2020 law graduates, PLLs who attempt the bar exam but do not pass it may continue in the Provisional Licensure Program until the program terminates. Furthermore, they are not required to sit for the bar exam. No further extensions of the program are anticipated. By the end of the program, they must have passed the bar exam to continue in the practice of law.

Please review the information regarding the Moral Character requirement, including the instructions for the Application for Determination of Moral Character and Application for Extension of Determination of Moral Character.

No. You are not eligible to file a moral character application until you commence the study of law and register as a law student with the State Bar. The State Bar has published Moral Character Guidelines to assist applicants for law school and the State Bar in understanding whether their past conduct might impact getting a positive moral character determination, which is a prerequisite for admission to the practice of law.

Maybe. You are required to disclose criminal matters in which you entered a plea of guilty or nolo contendere (no contest), even if the matter ultimately was dismissed without a judgment of conviction being entered or sentence imposed after you completed the terms of a diversion agreement. You are not required to disclose an arrest or charges that did not result in a misdemeanor or felony conviction unless you entered a plea of guilty or nolo contendere (no contest) or the matter is pending when you submit your application or during the processing of your application.

Yes. If you have been found to have violated a college, university, or law school honor code; or have been dropped, suspended, warned, placed on disciplinary probation, expelled, or requested to resign or allowed to resign in lieu of discipline by any college, university, or law school; or otherwise have been subjected to discipline by any such institution or been requested or advised by any such institution to discontinue your studies, you must disclose the incident on the moral character application.

The moral character application requires that at least one of your personal references be an attorney; the attorney may be retired or inactive. If you do not know an attorney who knows you well enough to comment on your character, you may submit the name and contact information of a nonattorney who knows you well enough to complete a questionnaire concerning your character. Neither the attorney nor other personal references may be related to you by blood or marriage, nor can they be reported as a supervisor under the employment section of the moral character application or as a verifying reference under the self-employment section of the moral character application.

No. You are only required to disclose the addresses of the places you have lived within the past eight years, including college and law school residences. If a residence gap is identified due to your extended periods of travel abroad, please report this information in the “Accounting for Gaps in Residence History” section of the moral character application.

Yes. A copy of your moral character application can be requested by submitting a Service Request Form with the applicable fee as a General Request in the Applicant Portal. Please allow approximately 30−45 days to process the request.

All funds received by a lawyer in connection with legal representation in which a client or a third party has an interest are funds that must be deposited in a trust account. Examples include advances for fees received from clients (until they are earned by the lawyer), funds of others that are being held for disbursement at a later time, personal injury awards, and litigation settlements. 

Client and third-party funds must be held in either an IOLTA or non-IOLTA type client trust account. The definitions of each are as follows: 

IOLTA—An attorney or firm that holds funds for a client or third party that are nominal in amount or are held for too short a time to earn interest income for the benefit of the client or third party in excess of the cost to hold the funds in a separate account is required to place those funds in an IOLTA account. (Bus. & Prof. Code, § 6211, subd. (a)). A California IOLTA account must be established and maintained with an eligible institution that offers IOLTA accounts that meet certain requirements. The State Bar website has a list of IOLTA-eligible institutions. 

Non-IOLTA—An attorney or firm that holds funds for a client or the benefit of a single party in a matter that is large enough to generate more than nominal interest, or an attorney who holds funds for a single party for an extended period must hold such funds in a non-IOLTA trust account. An example would be funds held by the administrator of a family trust. The attorney must use a non-IOLTA account because these entrusted funds will earn interest in excess of the costs to maintain the account. The interest earned goes to the client or third party. (Bus. & Prof. Code, § 6211, subd. (b)).

When registering a client trust account as part of CTAPP, you must identify the trust account type. The account will either be IOLTA or non-IOLTA; an account will never be both. The account type was established at the time the account was opened and does not change. A California IOLTA must bear the State Bar of California’s Taxpayer Identification Number to ensure that interest or dividends generated by this account will be paid to the State Bar’s IOLTA program. A non-IOLTA will bear the Social Security Number or Tax ID number of the client or third party.

If you have already completed your CTAPP reporting for the current period and you want to change an answer before the reporting deadline, you can access the CTAPP reporting page by logging in to My State Bar Profile. On your Client Trust Reporting page (third blue tab at the top), click the CTAPP Annual Reporting tile. You can click through the pop-up warning that says you have already submitted your CTAPP Annual Reporting declaration and that you will have to resubmit your declaration, or you will be out of compliance. NOTE: Even if you make no changes, be sure to click all the way through and resubmit your declaration.

A lawyer must report any changes to their client trust account to the State Bar within 30 days. A lawyer may add or close an account using the 30-day reporting window in My State Bar Profile, and a firm administrator may add or close an account or add or remove an attorney from an account through the 30-day reporting window in the Agency Billing platform. When a firm administrator adds a new attorney or removes an attorney from a trust account, they provide the effective date and reason for the disassociation as part of the reporting.

The trust account reporting system does not allow changes to routing numbers or account numbers of previously registered trust accounts. To report this change, please close the registration of the existing account by clicking the “Update Account Information” link and then entering, in the “Edit Close Date” tab, the date the account was changed to the new routing and account number. You will also need to enter the balance on that date. 

You can then register the account with the new routing number and account number. In the open date field, please enter the date the account was changed to the new routing and account number. Please be sure to enter the bank balance of the new account as of December 31.

Unless exempt (see FAQ 2.3, above), California licensees, regardless of where they practice, must still comply with the CTAPP reporting requirements. A licensee who was responsible for client funds and funds entrusted by others under the provisions of rule 1.15 of the California Rules of Professional Conduct must, annually, register each and every trust account in which the licensee held such funds at any time during the reportable time period by identifying account numbers and financial institutions in a manner prescribed by the State Bar for such reporting. There is no exception for out-of-state accounts.

Under Business and Professions Code section 6073.1(c), pro bono legal services means “providing or enabling the direct delivery of legal services without expectation of compensation from the client other than reimbursement of expenses to any of the following:

• An indigent person, as defined in subdivision (d) of section 6213.
• A charitable, religious, civil, community, governmental, or educational organization in matters that are designed primarily to address the needs of persons of limited means.
• A charitable, religious, civil, community, governmental, or educational organization in matters in furtherance of its organizational purposes.”

Generally, pro bono work performed through any State Bar legal aid grantee organization or through “a nonprofit organization that provides civil legal services for the poor without charge” qualifies as pro bono legal services and should be reported. See Business and Professions Code section 6159.51. 

Attorneys are asked to use their best good-faith judgment when determining what qualifies.

You must submit a Registration Application in addition to the Application for the Law Office Study Program, the required documentation, and the applicable fees in the Applicant Portal at least 30 days prior to beginning your legal studies in a law office or judge’s chamber. You will not receive credit for any study completed if the State Bar does not approve your applications.

Please do not submit the LOS application before you have found a qualified supervising attorney or judge.

To resume study after you have been terminated from the LOS Program, you must submit a new Application for the Law Office Study Program, the required documentation, and the fee in the Applicant Portal 30 days prior to the date you plan on resuming your legal studies.

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