Should There Be a Unified State Bar of Colorado?
| Publication year | 1977 |
| Pages | 1924 |
| Citation | Vol. 6 No. 11 Pg. 1924 |
1977, November, Pg. 1924. Should There Be A Unified State Bar Of Colorado?
The Colorado Bar Association (CBA) has always been a voluntary organization. A lawyer does not have to belong to CBA to be licensed and practice law in Colorado. For many years, Colorado has been in the minority in this regard. Presently, thirty states, the District of Columbia, Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico have unified bars.
Immediate past president of CBA, Tom Carney, and then president-elect, Dan Hoffman, decided a study should be done to determine if the CBA should be unified. This decision and the study done in the following year did not come from dissatisfaction with the present organization. On the contrary, the present organization is believed to be very fine. Its accomplishments over the past years are impressive.
However, CBA has also endured frustrations in not being able to get many programs implemented. A pilot study for certification of specialists in three limited areas (labor law, taxation and securities law) was submitted to the Colorado Supreme Court by then president, Andy Williams, in early 1974. No response has ever been received from the Court approving or disapproving the program. Thousands of collective hours of labor went into devising the program, traveling to local bar associations to publicize it, deliberating before the Executive Council and Board of Governors of CBA, and a myriad of other activities. Programs for mandatory continuing legal education and lawyer advertising met with a similar lack of success in being acted upon by the Court. The advertising issue is now being addressed by the Court, of necessity, due to the Bates decision.(fn1)
Dan Hoffman, Tom Carney, and other past presidents and officers began to wonder if our programs could be implemented if the Colorado Bar were a unified bar. If all lawyers belonged to one organization, the State Bar of Colorado,(fn2) would the Supreme Court delegate administration of programs to the Bar? Bar leaders have long wondered if the citizens and lawyers of Colorado are better served by a voluntary or a unified organization. Certainly, the fact that most states are unified, standing alone, would not be a reason for the study, nor would an apparent trend for more states to unify. Many Colorado practitioners, either educated or admitted in unified bar states and some having practiced there, have long advocated a unified bar for Colorado. They speak of a variety of advantages, including better legal research literature and resources, more financial
Careful thought was given to the composition of the Committee. Naturally, past presidents and local bar leaders were chosen. Other factors such as geographic representation, minorities, and representation of women lawyers and young lawyers were considered in issuing invitations for Committee membership.
It was deemed crucial that the many bar associations operating in Colorado, other than CBA and local associations, realize that CBA officers had no interest in replacing or interfering with the function of such associations. The leaders of the Colorado Trial Lawyers Association, the Defense Bar Association, the Federal Bar Association, the National Lawyers Guild, the Sam Carry Bar Association, the Colorado District Attorneys Association and the Colorado Public Defenders were contacted and asked to serve or furnish members of their organizations to serve upon the Committee.
The following constituted the Unified Bar Study Committee: Tom Woodford,
The first meeting was held on December 3, 1976, and was attended by twenty-three members who were most enthusiastic in looking at the possibility of unification. Equally or more enthusiastic additional lawyers in attendance were President Dan Hoffman, President-Elect Carlos Lucero, and Executive Vice President Bill Miller. The committee work was launched with no preconceived notions as to what its recommendation should be.
Considerable literature regarding bar unification was reviewed. It was determined that the experience of other states would be studied. Inquiry was made concerning mandatory continuing legal education, grievance procedures, specialization, advertising, whether advantages of voluntary associations were lost by unification, relationships with the courts, the degree of Court regulation and the involvement of unified bars in the law-making process through lobbying or other activities.
Much of the Committee's work will be described in the balance of this article. Various individuals will be referred to by name, not necessarily because they are more deserving of credit than individuals who may not be mentioned, but in order
Unification is not necessarily an all or nothing proposition. The concept has probably more consistently been referred to as "integration" or "an integrated bar." It has also been referred to as an "organized bar," or "corporate bar." The Unification Study Committee (the Committee) chose the words "unified bar" for use in the Committee name, realizing it was not an accurate description of the common denominator of all unified or mandatory bars, which is that one must belong and pay dues to a bar organization in order to practice law. The more commonly used term, "integrated," seems to have fallen into disfavor because of possible racial meaning. For convenience, the terms will be used interchangeably. No racial meaning is intended as this was not part of the Committee's concerns.
Unification has been characterized as a "continuum from complete integration to purely voluntary membership and fees, with several stopping-off places in between."(fn3) Professor Ted Schneyer, reporter for a committee appointed by the Wisconsin Supreme Court to make a study and recommendation of whether or not Wisconsin should continue to be unified, sets forth the alternatives as follows:
Under this arrangement, a state bar serves as the state's only machinery for carrying out the Supreme Court's supervision of law practice. Such a state bar would presumably maintain a list of practicing lawyers, set standards for admission to the bar, and administer the bar examination and conduct disciplinary investigation as well as impose discipline, subject only to appeals to the State Supreme Court. In addition, the organization would do everything else that bar associations normally do. Few states are integrated to this degree. The nearest example is Alabama.
Under this model, certain basic regulatory functions---such as bar admissions, discipline, certification of programs for mandatory CLE credit, certifying lawyers as specialists, and enforcing recertification requirements---are assigned to boards that may include lay members and are not responsible to or directly controlled by the state bar. Wisconsin and, to some degree, Michigan have this model.
There are a few states in which "unified bars" exist solely to perform certain basic administrative tasks. West Virginia is one example. There the state bar simply maintains a list of practicing lawyers and collects dues to support the state's disciplinary and admissions processes. A parallel voluntary association exists and provides all the other typical bar functions. This apparently is what was planned and recently attempted in Tennessee but has not been effected.(fn4)
This is the present Colorado situation. Without compelling membership in any organization, the courts in Illinois, Kansas, Minnesota and other states have set up boards that maintain registries of practicing lawyers and perform basic regulatory tasks. The boards' activities are financed at least in part with annual levies on practicing lawyers, presumably assuring adequate funding of these tasks. Voluntary associations operate independently of these boards and of the State Supreme Court.
Many states still utilize this arrangement. They have voluntary state-wide associations with no annual registration or fee requirements. Independent boards may exist to handle admissions and discipline, sometimes with volunteered assistance from bar associations. The boards are usually financed through...
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