To the editor: I can personally relate to the article on the California State Bar’s disproportionate discipline of Black attorneys.
In 1976, as a younger Black lawyer and among the many first with a solo workplace in a excessive rise in Century Metropolis, I endured an ordeal for which many white attorneys with comparable fees obtained brief suspensions or a public reprimand.
After paying a $10,000 retainer to a significant felony regulation agency, I used to be suggested to resign with fees pending for utilizing $35,000 of a shopper’s settlement funds to pay my overhead. The bar committee, made up of white guys from main regulation corporations, was ready to disbar me.
With a mea culpa, I resigned. I’ve lived since then with deep regret for my conduct and its outcomes on my household.
William Hill, Sherman Oaks
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To the editor: Whereas your article included the truth that the State Bar was the primary and solely identified licensing company to check this subject and talked about the nuanced underlying elements believed to contribute to the disparities, readers could infer from the headline that intentional discrimination was the rationale for the disparity.
The truth is, the research didn’t determine intentional discrimination as the rationale for the disparities.
Since 2019, the State Bar has been engaged on options to deal with these points. Your article talked about one such effort, which a volunteer group on the State Bar has been engaged on for greater than a yr: a pilot appointed-counsel program for lower-income attorneys dealing with State Bar investigations. That and different proposals will go earlier than our Board of Trustees in January.
As well as, the State Bar adopted different ideas stemming from the 2019 research. To restrict the potential that disparities in older closed complaints would possibly skew present charging selections, we’ve archived greater than 500,000 such closed complaints.
We even have been encouraging respondents to retain counsel, and we now recurrently present useful details about shopper belief account administration to attorneys who’ve been reported for minor financial institution overdrafts. We plan to do extra, together with conducting a follow-up research in 2024.
I’m proud to guide a corporation prepared to take a tough have a look at itself. And whereas I recognize The Occasions’ reporting, I need to make clear that not solely is the State Bar on the forefront of proactively figuring out racial disparities in its self-discipline system, but additionally that we’re taking vigorous motion to deal with the elements that contribute to these disparities.
Leah T. Wilson, San Francisco
The author is government director of the State Bar of California.
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To the editor: The State Bar has been credibly accused of corruption, incompetence and now racial bias in its self-discipline of attorneys. I ponder how lengthy earlier than the State Bar would revoke my license to follow regulation if I used to be accused of the identical violations.
Herb Fox, Santa Barbara
The author is an lawyer.
