CA bar suspends 1,600 attorneys for violating rules set up after Girardi allegedly stole millions

[Zorro]

More than 1,600 attorneys have been suspended by the California State Bar for violating rules about client trust accounts that were set up after disgraced L.A. attorney Thomas Girardi allegedly stole millions of dollars from his clients.

The Client Trust Account Protection Program, which went into effect last year, requires attorneys to register their client trust accounts annually with the state bar, complete a yearly self-assessment of their practices managing client trust accounts and certify with the state bar that they comply and understand the requirements for safekeeping funds.

After the reporting component is fulfilled, the state bar will then begin compliance reviews and investigative audits when appropriate.

Originally, more than 1,700 attorneys were found in violation of the rules and enrolled as “inactive” with the bar, meaning they’re not legally allowed to practice law. As of Thursday afternoon, that number has dropped to 1,641 after some of the attorneys fulfilled their requirements, according to Special Counsel Steven Moawad, who works for the bar’s attorney discipline system.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-07-28/california-bar-suspends-nearly-1-600-attorneys-for-violating-rules-set-up-after-tom-girardi-scandal

[Indykatie]

1. That's A Lot of Shady Lawyers Even For A State As Big As California n/t

[OAITW r.2.0]

2. Love to know the Party affiliation of these lawyers.

I'm guessing a 80/20 split.

[Jirel]

4. At least half are probably quite ethical.

The systems that some states use for this are a mess. I was technically out of compliance in one of the states I was barred in, because of that. My state keeps a list of IOLTA accounts. If for some reason there is a glitch and your account isn’t on it, or shows closed (which can happen due to various clerical or electronic errors), you literally can’t update your IOLTA status. For going on a year, I was pestering the human staff (2 people for the whole system) to fix the account status so I could bloody update it. Nothing. They were perfectly nice on the phone and over email, but they never got around to it for months.

With a new system like this, I’m sure they’re having plenty of glitches, not to mention the usual reasons these things get screwed up, from a law firm admin who’s tasked with doing everyone’s screwing it up (this was another terror when I worked at a firm - they wanted you to submit I do to THEM every year for updating the liability insurance and IOLTA status), to lawyers mostly retired or leaving practice who didn’t “get around to it” because they do do little legal work at this point, they aren’t keeping up. The latter isn’t a great excuse, but it happens a lot.

[Goonch]

3. 👇👇👇👁️👁️

[quaint]

5. Dead attorneys don't file. 😁

Moawad emphasized that the suspension is administrative and not disciplinary; none of the nearly 1,600 attorneys who were suspended were found to have been stealing money from their trust accounts.

Another possibility is that some of the attorneys who were suspended may have already died, but the state bar doesn’t have a database in order to track that status.