Report 2022-030 Recommendation 8 Responses

Report 2022-030: The State Bar of California's Attorney Discipline Process: Weak Policies Limit Its Ability to Protect the Public From Attorney Misconduct (Release Date: April 2022)

Recommendation #8 To: Bar of California, State

To improve its ability to identify and prevent conflicts of interest that its staff may have with attorneys who are subjects of complaints, the State Bar should develop a process by July 2022 for monitoring the accuracy of the information in its case management system used to flag attorneys with whom its staff have declared a conflict of interest.

1-Year Agency Response

This recommendation was fully implemented as reported in the 6-month update and response to follow up question at that time.

California State Auditor's Assessment of 1-Year Status: Partially Implemented

As described in our assessment of the State Bar's 6-month update, it did not provide documentation of the link between it's conflict of interest database and its case management system. The examples that it provided were not sufficient for us to conclude that the case management system consistently flags potential conflicts of interest. As we described in our report, in some cases, the State Bar's case management system reflected that an attorney was on State Bar's conflicts list, and in other cases it did not. Thus, we need documentation that illustrates how the State Bar's updated process consistently results in all potential conflicts being accurately reported in its case management system, rather than a selection of instances in which this occurred.

6-Month Agency Response

The IT processes to coordinate the COI database with OCTC's case management system and ensure that in the case management system, a flag is placed on the person record of each attorney with whom a conflict has been identified in the COI database were completed in September 2022. The State Bar revised the COI database's questions to identify conflicts. On September 26, 2022, Human Resources circulated new Administrative Advisory 22-05: Rule 2201 Conflict of Interest Compliance, which requires all staff, contractors, and Board members to use the revised questions to create an initial compliance questionnaire or update their existing one in the COI database by no later than October 14, 2022. See supporting documents: Administrative Advisory 22-05; HR email regarding Administrative Advisory 22-05.

California State Auditor's Assessment of 6-Month Status: Partially Implemented

The State Bar has not yet provided documentation of the link between its conflict of interest database and its case management system. We look forward to reviewing this documentation during our next evaluation of its progress.

60-Day Agency Response

To ensure accuracy of information in the case management system, the State Bar's Information Technology group has initiated processes that: (1) update the conflict of interest (COI) application (the application where State Bar employees enter attorney relationship information) to apply the current 2201 rules for all State Bar affiliates and determine if and how an attorney should be flagged; (2) update attorney records in the case management system so that they reflect the correct flag as set in the COI application; (3) clean up existing flags in both the COI application and case management system at the attorney level; and (4) create a report to compare the COI application and case management system and ensure that they are in sync. OCTC also issued a new policy directive, effective June 1, 2022, implementing procedures that require investigators and attorneys to perform conflict checks and enter the results of those conflict checks into the case management system both at the time of assignment and prior to closure.

California State Auditor's Assessment of 60-Day Status: Pending

The State Bar indicated that it is working to implement the processes listed in its response. We look forward to reviewing the results of this work.

All Recommendations in 2022-030

Agency responses received are posted verbatim.