Thousands Of California Lawyers Yet To Be Re-Fingerprinted

The State Bar has started to issue fines to non-compliant attorneys.

Nearly 5,000 California attorneys had not been re-fingerprinted as of June 1, a month after the State Bar-enforced deadline for compliance.

Another 5,173 attorneys were in “compliance pending” status, meaning their fingerprints had been submitted but were awaiting final processing.

Meanwhile, close to 1,000 lawyers’ fingerprints were rejected and likely need to be re-submitted, according to the bar.

As a result, about 6 percent of the state’s slightly more than 190,000 active attorneys have yet to achieve compliance with the state’s re-fingerprinting mandate. Roughly 179,000 lawyers have adhered to the requirement.

The bar has issued fines to those out of compliance, according to bar spokeswoman Teresa Ruano.

Active attorneys who were not re-fingerprinted as of May 1 faced fines of $75, and those non-compliant as of August 1 will be fined another $100.

Lawyers who remain in noncompliance as of Dec. 1 will have their licenses suspended.

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Re-fingerprinting is being undertaken because the California bar was required by a 1989 law to ensure the retention of submitted fingerprints from lawyer applicants so it could receive notifications of subsequent attorney arrests and convictions. But the agency did not follow the law for two-plus decades, so it has worked in recent years to achieve compliance.

The re-fingerprinting process has generated thousands of criminal records for the bar to review to determine whether to pursue disciplinary action against implicated lawyers.

As of May 1, the bar had learned of 2,659 misdemeanors and 40 felonies it did not previously know about. Another 140 FBI records were unclear as to whether they involved felonies or misdemeanors.

The bar said the convictions discovered through re-fingerprinting have not yet been sent to the State Bar Court for possible disciplinary action.

“Before transmitting a conviction to the State Bar Court, the Office of Chief Trial Counsel must locate and obtain certified court records to prove the conviction occurred,” the agency said. “Certified copies of the felony convictions obtained through the fingerprinting process have been requested, but we have not yet received complete records.”

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“Upon receipt, the Office of Chief Trial Counsel will review the record of conviction and other relevant information and transmit them to the State Bar Court, at which point the records would become public information,” the agency continued.

The bar also noted that many of the felonies are more than a decade old.

The noncompliance of more than 5,000 attorneys with the re-fingerprinting requirement has come even as one legal malpractice insurer offered to pay its policyholders part of the estimated $82 per attorney cost.

Lawyers’ Mutual Insurance Company provided a $50 payment to attorney members who provided evidence of compliance.

The goal of the program was to encourage policyholders to get re-fingerprinted as required, said Cathy Sargent, Lawyers’ Mutual’s vice president of development and outreach.

“We had big participation,” she said.

The company also assisted attorneys in navigating the re-fingerprinting process, Sargent said.


Lyle Moran is a freelance writer in San Diego who handles both journalism and content writing projects. He previously reported for the Los Angeles Daily Journal, San Diego Daily Transcript, Associated Press, and Lowell Sun. He can be reached at lmoransun@gmail.com and found on Twitter @lylemoran.