Bar Governance Issues at the Forefront

• Jurisdiction: California,United States
• Citation: Vol. 06 No. 2016 Pg. 02
• Publication year: 2016
• Pages: 02
• Year: 2016
• topic: Business of Law,Corporate / Commercial,Civil Procedure

Bar governance issues at the forefront No. 2016 #02 California Bar Journal June, 2016

Editor's note: On June 2, after this story was published, the state Assembly approved the State Bar's fee bill with further amendments.

Laura Ernde, Staff Writer

A State Bar task force will continue discussions about dividing the bar into separate regulatory and trade associations, even as the state Assembly turned down a proposed fee bill that would have eliminated six attorney-elected seats on the bar's Board of Trustees.

Members of the assembly rejected AB 2878 on a 8-44 vote late last month. It called for the board to shrink from 19 members to 13 members by October 2019 as the elected trustees' terms expire. Assembly members said they rejected the measure because they wanted to see more changes at the State Bar, but they were not specific.

AB 2878 did not include a proposal to split up the agency's regulatory functions from its trade association activities.

If passed, the bill would have called for the board to be made up of seven attorneys and six non-attorneys appointed by the governor, the Legislature and the Supreme Court. New appointees would be required to have expertise in government regulatory functions or fiscal management.

Other proposed changes would have required the State Bar to...