You Got a Letter from the State Bar: Do You Need a Lawyer?

• Publication year: 2021
• Author: By Ashod Mooradian

You Got a Letter From the State Bar: Do You Need a Lawyer?

By Ashod Mooradian

After nearly a decade as a senior prosecutor with the State Bar of California, Ashod Mooradian founded a boutique practice exclusively focused on providing legal ethics and professional responsibility consultations and State Bar matter representation in disciplinary, regulatory or admission-related cases. Currently, Ashod is a member of the standing ethics committees for the Los Angeles County Bar and the California Lawyers Association, and the American Bar Association's Center for Professional Responsibility (CPR). In 2019, Ashod was awarded CPR's Jeanne P. Gray Diversity Scholarship and worked on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives for the legal profession nationwide. In August 2020, Ashod launched www.StateBarHelp.com to provide guidance and resources for California attorneys.

Most California attorneys would agree that receiving a letter from a State Bar investigator requesting a response to a client complaint or State Bar initiated investigation would be very distressing to say the least. In addition, if not handled properly, a State Bar disciplinary investigation can be catastrophic to any attorney's professional reputation or worse result in actual suspension from the practice of law or even disbarment.

As detailed below, the reality of the situation is complex and not all bad. Statistically speaking, most California attorneys will not receive a complaint or come under investigation for ethical misconduct by the State Bar in the first place. On the other hand, if the attorney cannot satisfactorily explain the alleged misconduct, the case will be escalated, and the attorney will suddenly find themselves exposed to a very high statistical risk of having discipline imposed against them.

In this article, I contend that the best way to ensure that a State Bar letter is properly handled is to seek out counsel and direction from a qualified State Bar defense attorney.¹ With the help of a qualified State Bar defense attorney, the target attorney (called "respondent") can navigate the disciplinary system and avoid costly mistakes along the way that can make a bad situation worse. The bottom line is this: if an attorney finds him or herself facing down a State Bar disciplinary investigation, the first and most consequential decision is retaining a qualified State Bar defense attorney.

UNDERSTANDING THE RISK OF DISCIPLINE

According the State Bar's 2019 Annual Discipline Report (ADR),² the State Bar's enforcement arm, the Office of Chief Trial Counsel (OCTC), opened 16,200 complaint cases against respondents in 2019.³ Of those 16,200 cases, about 86% (or 13,936 cases) were closed by OCTC with no action, leaving only 2,264 cases that were investigated or otherwise processed by the State Bar's discipline system.⁴ Put another way, of the approximately 190,000 active attorneys in California, a little less than 1.2% actually faced an issue before the State Bar in 2019.

Further, even if an attorney was among those who had a disciplinary case opened against them in 2019, there was only about a 20% chance that OCTC would actually file a case against that attorney in State Bar Court.⁵ That is, according to the State Bar's 2019 ADR, among the 2,264 cases that were investigated or otherwise processed by OCTC in 2019, only 435 cases were filed against respondents in State Bar Court.⁶

On the other hand, out of those 435 filed cases, 405 cases resulted in the imposition of some level of public discipline⁷ by State Bar Court.⁸ In addition, in those 405 cases, the State Bar Court imposed disbarment in 117 cases and actual suspensions of the attorney's right to practice law for a specified period of time (usually a minimum of thirty days and a maximum of two years) in 110 cases.⁹

[Page 20]

Accordingly, once a respondent was in the system (i.e., a State Bar Court case was filed by OCTC), there was a staggering 93% chance that some level of public discipline would be imposed and about a 56% chance that serious discipline¹⁰ would be imposed. This means in order to avoid a State Bar investigation from turning into professional discipline against an attorney, that attorney must do everything he or she can to avoid being part...