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From Looting to
Initiative
The State Bar has a
reserve fund for emergencies or unusual expenses which is
currently about $5.8 million -- a bare minimum for an
organization the size of the State Bar. Last year there was
a concerted effort by the three largest legal services
organizations to have the Board award them $1,350,000.00
(through TEAJF) of this Reserve. At the April 16, 2004,
meeting of the State Bar Board of Directors, this move was
defeated. Then the defeat was undermined.
These legal services organizations
are the same groups which acted as a consortium and proposed
and lobbied for the $65 Pro
Bono Tax which was
appended to the State Bar Act of 2003.
Here
is a Council member's response to this attempt. This was
submitted to the Directors at its meeting on April 16,
2004.
At the June 2004 Board of Directors
meeting, $300,000 in "one-time" benefits was awarded to
these organizations. (This includes a grant which allowed
the legal services entities to negotiate a deal with Lexis
on-line research for an astonishing cost of $31 per legal
aid lawyer.) In the budget just adopted, that "one-time"
grant was continued as the "Legal Services Initiative" and
was increased. The cost now, including a $50,000 which was
moved to the Access to Justice Budget, is $440,000.
Mandatory Pro Bono has
come in the Back Door.
Every year for the last decade or so -- at least since the
sunset review for the State Bar in the early nineties, we
have been assured that no candidate for state bar office was
advocating mandatory pro bono. For the last few of those
years, just before the 2003 legislative session when the
State Bar Act came up for renewal, we have been told that
mandatory pro bono was on no one's agenda and that we as
lawyers should not tempt the legislature by voicing
systematic and principled opposition to mandatory pro bono.
Those who advised us were wrong. The story is laid out
here.
TEAJF won; clients and
lawyers lost.
Robin Hood has come to Constitutional law. On March
26, 2003, the Supreme Court of the United States took the
position that interest on your clients' money is justifiably
taken without compensation. This decision effectively
undercuts the decisions of the Court of Appeals for the
Fifth Circuit and the Supreme Court's prior decision in the
Texas Case. The decision can be found here.
The webmaster's commentary is here.
A lot of effort and debate
has gone into attempting to meet the challenge of
"multi-disciplinary practice" and the de facto practice of
law by banks, accountants, brokers and others. This is
apparently going to come to nothing. This story is
here.
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