Report 2020-030 Recommendations

To ensure that it is operating efficiently, the State Bar should assess the impact of its discipline system reorganization, including determining how the changes have affected its ability to efficiently resolve cases and fulfill its mandate to protect the public. Based on the assessment's results, the State Bar should determine whether additional changes to its organizational structure are warranted.

To determine if the changes to its discipline process have been effective and to help it identify problems in specific phases of its process before they affect the backlog, the State Bar should implement methods to monitor its enforcement process performance, including comparing the trial counsel staff 's performance against its benchmarks.

To reduce its backlog of discipline cases and ensure that it has appropriately allocated resources to all phases of its discipline process, the State Bar should develop and recommend an appropriate backlog measure and goal as required by state law, including the number of days at which a case should be added to the backlog as well as a goal for the number of cases in the backlog.

To reduce its backlog of discipline cases and ensure that it has appropriately allocated resources to all phases of its discipline process, the State Bar should determine the staffing level necessary to achieve the goal it develops and recommends, as required by state law.

To reduce its backlog of discipline cases and ensure that it has appropriately allocated resources to all phases of its discipline process, the State Bar should work with the Legislature to establish the backlog measure and goal it develops and recommends, and to revise its reporting requirements accordingly. If necessary, the State Bar should also request the additional resources required to meet the goal.

To ensure that the State Bar's discipline report presents accurate, complete, and consistent information as state law requires, the board should require the designated committee to review, evaluate, and approve the discipline report before submitting it to the board. Additionally, the committee should develop procedures outlining how the State Bar should compile the report in accordance with statutory requirements. The committee should approve these procedures for the State Bar's use before finalizing its 2021 discipline report.

To ensure that users of the discipline report can compare information from year to year, the State Bar should describe in each discipline report any changes it makes to its approach to calculating metrics and, for that year, provide information calculated under both its old and new methods.

To ensure that it receives the best value for the money it spends, the State Bar should establish documentation standards and templates for contract mangers to follow when using the exam exemption.

To clarify state law and provide more transparency regarding the nature of the existing backlog of discipline cases, the Legislature should revise state law to remove Business and Professions Code section 6140.2, which has similar requirements for the State Bar's goals and policies for timely case processing but omits the State Bar's authority to designate complicated matters.

To clarify state law and provide more transparency regarding the nature of the existing backlog of discipline cases, the Legislature should revise Business and Professions Code section 6086.15, subdivision (a)(1), to require the State Bar to include in its discipline report the number of complicated matters as of the end of the reporting period that were pending beyond 12 months after receipt without dismissal, admonition, or the filing of formal charges by the trial counsel's office.

To provide itself sufficient time to review the discipline report before considering the annual fee bill, the Legislature should amend state law to require the State Bar's discipline report to cover the 12 months from July 1 through June 30 of the previous year and to require that the State Bar submit the discipline report annually by October 31.

To provide itself sufficient time to review the discipline report before considering the annual fee bill the Legislature should, in the year in which it amends the discipline report's time period, require the State Bar to report information for both the prior calendar year and the newly defined period to ensure that stakeholders can compare the information for the newly defined period to prior years.