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Both arbitration and mediation involve a neutral third party. In arbitration, the arbitrator hears evidence and arguments, and then issues a decision that may be binding or nonbinding. In mediation, the mediator helps the parties reach their own voluntary agreement.
No. Both sides must agree to mediation. The State Bar will notify the opposing party if mediation is requested.
If you received a Notice of Client’s Right to Fee Arbitration form from the attorney, you have 30 days from the date you received it to submit your arbitration request form to the program. You must also submit your arbitration request if you first wish to mediate the fee dispute.
If you do not file the request form within 30 days of receiving the notice, you will lose your right to arbitrate your fee dispute. A telephone call or letter to the program requesting arbitration will not protect that right. You must be sure that the request form is complete and submitted with any required filing fee.
If the attorney has already filed a lawsuit against you for unpaid fees, you may elect either to respond to the lawsuit or request fee arbitration. If you file a response to the lawsuit, you will lose your right to arbitrate the fee dispute. If you request arbitration, the lawsuit will be stayed, but you should file the appropriate notice of automatic stay with the court. To preserve your right to arbitrate, you should file a request for arbitration promptly.
Your request for mediation is part of the State Bar request for arbitration, so it will follow the same timelines listed above.
No. The mediator will not decide any issues related to attorney misconduct and/or malpractice and has no authority to make any determinations regarding the attorney’s conduct or to discipline attorneys for professional misconduct.
If you wish to file a disciplinary complaint with the State Bar of California about your attorney’s conduct, you may do so online. Please keep in mind that a discipline complaint and a request to arbitrate and mediate a fee dispute are separate matters. Filing a complaint may result in disciplinary action against the attorney; however, the result may or may not require the attorney to refund fees.
To help you decide whether to file a complaint, visit the Want to File a Complaint webpage.
If you think you have a separate claim for legal malpractice, you should seek legal counsel.
If you are seeking a refund of attorney’s fees that you have already paid, you may request fee mediation as a preliminary option along with arbitration as long as you are still within the legal time limit for filing a lawsuit about the fee dispute. To preserve your right to arbitrate, and to potentially mediate a fee dispute, you should file a request for arbitration promptly.
For disputes filed with the State Bar, simply check the box agreeing to mediate on the request for fee arbitration form. Some local bar associations offer fee mediation in addition to fee arbitration. Find local fee arbitration programs.
Yes. Mediation is voluntary and either side can decline to mediate. All parties must agree for a mediation to go forward.
Mediations will take place by videoconference. Usually, the parties are in separate areas to start but may be brought together later in the process. The mediator will typically meet separately with one party, and then the other, to understand their perspectives and to identify areas of potential agreement. This “shuttle diplomacy” will take place until an agreement is reached, or until it is clear to the mediator that it is not possible for the parties to reach an agreement. If an agreement is reached, it will be memorialized in a writing called a settlement agreement.
You may be represented by an attorney, but it is not required. You can arrange for an interpreter to attend the mediation with you.
The mediation is confidential. This means that nothing said in a mediation can be used as evidence in any later proceeding by any party at the mediation.
The decision to agree to mediate is entirely up to you, but the attorney will also have to agree in order for the mediation to occur.
If the dispute is eligible to be filed with the State Bar for fee arbitration, you will have the option of agreeing to mediation as part of the request for arbitration. Some local bars also offer fee mediation, but most local programs only offer fee arbitration.
When you complete the Request for Arbitration with the State Bar, you will be asked to indicate whether you are interested in mediating the fee dispute. Once your request is accepted, including receipt of payment of the applicable fee arbitration filing fee, the State Bar will serve your request to the opposing party. As part of the opposing party’s written reply to the request, they will indicate whether they agree to mediate the fee dispute prior to arbitration.
If both parties agree to mediation, a mediator will be assigned to help you and attorney try to reach a settlement of your dispute, and you will receive further instructions at that time.
The State Bar does not refer clients to lawyers or provide legal advice. We provide a directory of certified Lawyer Referral Services in your area who may be able to help you find a lawyer. Please see our Find Legal Professionals section for resources. The State Bar also publishes free legal information for consumers.
If you believe your lawyer has done something wrong, you can file a complaint with the State Bar. Complaints may be submitted online or by mail. If you have questions or need assistance in completing the form, call the State Bar’s Attorney Complaint Hotline at 800-843-9053. For more information on reporting a lawyer to the State Bar and handling other problems, read the legal guide If You Have a Problem with an Attorney.
If you have a complaint about a certified or uncertified LRS, you can file a complaint against the service with the State Bar. In order to promote public protection, the State Bar will review your complaint to determine if the LRS has violated Business and Professions Code Section 6155 and State Bar Rules.
For more information on certified lawyer referral services, contact LRS@calbar.ca.gov.
The due date is by March 30, or the next business day if that date falls on a weekend or holiday, each year during the annual license renewal process. The 2025 annual deadline is April 1, 2025. If you miss the deadline, you will be charged a penalty ($103 for active attorneys, $31 for inactive attorneys).
Activities that qualify for general MCLE credit must: (1) relate to legal subjects that are directly relevant to California attorneys, and (2) offer current, significant educational, professional, or practical content with the specific objective of increasing each participant’s professional competency as an attorney. Programs created primarily for nonattorney audiences (for example, general public, clients, or business staff) do not qualify and will not be approved for general MCLE credit. More on Standards for MCLE activity Approval.
IOLTA stands for Interest on Lawyers’ Trust Accounts. Attorneys deposit client funds that they plan to hold briefly, or that are too small to earn interest for the client, into larger shared accounts. Over 73,000 attorneys make deposits in approximately 49,000 IOLTA accounts in California. As of September 2019, IOLTA accounts hold nearly $5 billion. Any interest earned on these accounts is paid by financial institutions to the State Bar, which in turn distributes those funds as grants to qualified nonprofit civil legal organizations throughout the state.
Refer to the State Bar’s IOLTA FAQ page for more information.
Provide as much responsive information as possible. If you are unable to obtain responsive information after conducting a diligent search and contacting others who might have the information, such as an attorney who represented you, indicate that you have conducted such a search and are unable to obtain certain information, and detail the steps you took. An omission of responsive information with no explanation may delay the processing of your moral character application.
No. An applicant who reported an incident of sexual assault or sexual harassment to an educational institution is not required to disclose the incident on the moral character application as a civil action or administrative proceeding to which the applicant was a party.
However, if a complaint was filed against you and you were formally or informally dropped, suspended, warned, placed on disciplinary probation, expelled, or requested to resign or allowed to resign in lieu of discipline from the educational institution, you must disclose this information on the moral character application in response to the question about scholastic discipline.
No. There is no act of misconduct that automatically disqualifies an applicant from obtaining a positive moral character determination. The State Bar makes moral character determinations on a case-by-case basis, considering each applicant’s history. When an applicant has criminal history, the State Bar determines whether sufficient rehabilitation has occurred to warrant a positive moral character determination. Please review the Moral Character Guidelines for additional related information.
Yes. A certified copy of each out-of-state driving record must be uploaded to the moral character application prior to submission. An application received without the out-of-state driving record(s) will be considered incomplete and will delay the processing of the moral character application.
Yes. You must disclose all employment that is law-related or is not law-related, occurred during the last five years, and lasted more than six months, even when the employer is no longer operating. You do not need to provide a defunct employer’s address, email address, or phone number; however, if you have contact information for your former supervisor from the business, you must provide this information in your application.
First, try to reset the password. Second, call the Office of Admissions at 800-843-9053 and request a password reset email. Please do not register with another email address, as doing so will create a duplicate account.
You may submit a General Request to ask questions that are not related to your moral character application, request FD-258 fingerprint cards, or request assistance with the application prior to submission. General Requests are answered in the order received, and there may be a delay before the General Request is addressed as the volume of requests varies.
A lawyer in possession of client or third-party funds and property is a fiduciary. A lawyer must safeguard and segregate those funds and not commingle them with the lawyer's personal or business accounts. (See FAQ 1.3, above, for a description of the two types of trust accounts a lawyer may open to hold client or third-party funds.)
A lawyer must report timely and completely to their client regarding the status and accounting of client funds. A lawyer’s obligations regarding entrusted funds and property are set out in rule 1.15 of the Rules of Professional Conduct. In addition, under rule 1.4 of the Rules of Professional Conduct, a lawyer must keep their client reasonably informed about significant developments related to a client’s representation. Comment [1] to this rule specifies that a lawyer’s receipt of funds on behalf of a client ordinarily is a significant development requiring such communication with the client.
Yes. Even if you do not currently hold funds in your client trust account, you must still report and register the account. Further, regardless of whether there are client funds, third-party funds, or no funds in a trust account, an attorney has the Client Trust Account obligations set forth in the standards in rule 1.15.
The definition of a client trust account is “any bank account or accounts opened to receive or hold funds in accordance with rule 1.15(a) of the Rules of Professional Conduct, regardless of the amount of funds in the account, and includes, but is not limited to, any IOLTA account under Business and Professions Code section 6211, subdivision (a) where the interest is paid to the State Bar; and any accounts established under Business and Professions Code section 6211, subdivision (b) where the interest is payable to a client or other person.”
Question 1 asks whether, to comply with the requirements or prohibitions governing the safekeeping of funds of clients and other persons in rule 1.15 of the California Rules of Professional Conduct, you maintained—or anyone maintained on your behalf—any trust account under Business and Professions Code section 6211, subdivision (a) where the interest is paid to the State Bar, also known as an Interest on Lawyers’ Trust Account (IOLTA), or a similar pooled trust account in another jurisdiction?
Question 2 asks the same question about trust accounts under Business and Professions Code section 6211, subdivision (b) where the interest is payable to a client or other person or similar accounts, also known as non-IOLTA trust accounts, or a similar trust account in another jurisdiction.
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.
Rule 2.2(C) of the Rules of the State Bar requires licensees to report changes in trust account information within 30 days of any change. Many licensees are unaware of this longstanding rule. At this time, there is no penalty for noncompliance with the 30-day update requirement. Answering this question truthfully will not increase the likelihood of a CTAPP compliance review or investigatory audit. Currently, the State Bar is focusing 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.
Unless exempt (see FAQ 2.3, above), California licensees, regardless of where they practice, must still comply with the CTAPP reporting requirements. Licensees must report and register each and every trust account in any location if (1) they acted as a signatory or exercised managerial or primary administrative oversight for a trust account held pursuant to rule 1.15 of the California Rules of Professional Conduct, or (2) were otherwise responsible for complying with any of the requirements or prohibitions in rule 1.15 of the California 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 (e.g., responsibilities for safekeeping of funds, to identify and discharge liens, notify clients that funds have been received, etc.).
Currently, CTAPP reporting features do not allow licensees or firm administrators to enter non-U.S. routing and account numbers. Therefore, for all non-U.S. trust accounts, in Step 1 (Annual Client Trust Account Reporting), please check the box next to “Yes, I will provide or update IOLTA and/or non-IOLTA account information, including the balance as of December 31, 2025, via My State Bar Profile” for the appropriate question, depending on the type of account. Then, during Step 2 (Account Registration), check the checkbox next to “Other” under the sentence, “If you selected Yes to the IOLTA or Non-IOLTA question in Step 1, but are unable to register that IOLTA (CA or Non-CA) and/or Non-IOLTA because you do not have some of the required information, please describe why below,” and, in the box provided, list all non-U.S. bank accounts, including bank name, account number, and country of origin. In future years, we expect enhancements to the reporting application will make it possible for licensees and agencies to report non-U.S. trust account information.
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