As this week marks National Consumer Protection Week (March 3-March 9), the State Bar of California’s Public Trust Liaison (PTL) Enrique Zuniga advises consumers to take one simple step to avoid becoming a victim of fraud: use the State Bar’s Look Up a Lawyer search feature before signing agreements with anyone offering legal services.
At a special meeting February 26, the State Bar of California Board of Trustees approved a 2024 budget that relies on last year’s building sale proceeds as a stopgap measure to stave off the impact of an ongoing structural deficit. The Board also reviewed and discussed plans for an April 1 set of reports to the Legislature that will articulate the State Bar’s needs for a fee increase in 2025.
How does IOLTA work?
Very often, the amount of money a lawyer handles for a single client is quite small, or will be held for such a short period of time that it cannot earn net income for the client.
When these small or short-term funds belonging to clients are placed in a single, interest- or dividend-bearing trust account, the funds collectively earn interest that the financial institution forwards to the State Bar of California to support nonprofit legal aid organizations that provide civil legal aid to indigent and low-income people, seniors and persons with disabilities.
Business and Professions Code Sections 6091.2, 6211, 6212, 6213 require that financial institutions that choose to participate in the IOLTA program offer comparable bank investment products to their IOLTA customers as they do to their similarly situated customers. If a financial institution does not meet this requirement, then attorneys are not allowed to hold their IOLTA at that financial institution.
The State Bar of California announced today that it has earned Gold level status in its DEI Leadership Seal Program, and the law firm Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP has earned Bronze. The two join 34 other California legal organizations that earned a DEI Leadership seal in 2023, when the State Bar launched the initiative to recognize legal employers who implement research-driven actions that further workplace diversity, equity, and inclusion.
At its meeting on January 18–19, the State Bar of California’s Board of Trustees discussed the State Bar’s significant budget challenges and provided direction on plans to request of the Legislature a licensing fee increase for 2025. When the Legislature authorized flat licensing fees for 2024 amid an ongoing structural deficit in the State Bar’s General Fund, it directed submission of reports by April 1 that will outline the State Bar’s future funding needs.
In a first-of-its kind move, the State Bar of California Committee of Bar Examiners (CBE) voted today to withdraw the registration and terminate the degree-granting authority of Los Angeles-based Peoples College of Law (PCL), effective May 31, 2024.
In a ruling issued on December 6, 2023, the Ninth Circuit’s en banc panel affirms the State Bar’s sovereign immunity as an arm of the state under the Eleventh Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
