While the PLP recognizes that some PLLs may engage in unpaid volunteer work, nothing in the program purports to exempt employers from any applicable employment and wage and hour laws. Employers interested in supervising a PLL in unpaid volunteer work should determine whether such an arrangement is legally permissible given the specific factual circumstances and should follow all applicable laws as required. Also, refer to the California Lawyers Association’s webpage about employing and paying a PLL.

No. The license is suspended to give the PLL the opportunity to contest the determination. If no request for review or appeal is timely filed, the PLL is terminated. If a request for review or appeal is timely filed, the PLL will remain suspended until the final outcome, unless the PLL is terminated as a result of other factors (such as failing to timely meet other program requirements).

Applications are considered individually. Processing times for applications are affected by variables such as the relative complexity of an applicant’s history. It may take 180 days or more from the date the application is deemed complete to finish the processing of a moral character application. You may submit a moral character application after you meet the eligibility requirements by commencing the study of law and registering with the State Bar as a law student or an attorney applicant. Applicants are encouraged to file a moral character application before the start of their last year of law study.

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.

Announcements are messages from the site administrator. Announcements can be viewed by clicking the announcement tab on the top menu. They provide updates and notices for all e-learning portal users.

No. All persons newly admitted to the State Bar of California must take the New Attorney Training Program courses produced by the State Bar and offered through this e-learning portal. 

No other courses will satisfy completion of the New Attorney Training requirement for new admittees.

Payments will be made through a third-party vendor, Wells Fargo, using their E-Bill Express platform.

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

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.