Legal Ethics

MCLE Audit Emails Spark Panic Among Some California Lawyers

Discipline defense lawyers say they heard from attorneys who were improperly told by the State Bar they were not in compliance.

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Recent emails from the State Bar to some California lawyers alleging they were noncompliant with their Minimum Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) audit requirements caused some recipients to panic.

A few discipline defense attorneys said the notifications sparked great concern because they heard from lawyers who believed they had previously submitted documentation in support of their MCLE hours and should not be subject to the potential loss of their licenses.

However, the bar said the notifications were sent to a little more than 100 attorneys who had been audited for MCLE compliance and whose files were deemed incomplete. They also were not the first reminders sent this cycle, the agency said.

The reminder emails sent just days before the Nov. 15 deadline warned lawyers that failure to come into compliance would result in their license status being changed to “inactive” effective Nov. 16. The emails said noncompliance would also result in an “assessment of an additional $200 reinstatement penalty and possible referral to the Office of Chief Trial Counsel for further investigation.”

The bar has carried out MCLE audits for several years, and bar spokeswoman Teresa Ruano said the number of replies and complaints in response to the audit emails “was no more than usual.”

But attorney Megan Zavieh, who represents lawyers before the State Bar of California, said she has never received the same level of feedback from lawyers who believed they were improperly accused of being noncompliant with MCLE audits.

Those who contacted her, including clients and non-clients, were “absolutely panicked” after hearing from the bar that they were in jeopardy of having their licenses suspended.

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“If there is anything that scares lawyers, it is action by the bar,” Zavieh said. “I was getting calls from people I don’t represent saying, ‘I don’t know what to do. I did what I thought I was supposed to and now I got this email.’”

Zavieh said adding to the anxiety for the lawyers who contacted her was a lack of an immediate response from the bar to their emails highlighting they believed they were in compliance.

“Some reported they had written back and said, ‘I don’t understand. I replied to your audit,’” Zavieh said. “They were not getting any kind of quick response. And with the time being only a couple of days before they were going to be inactive, anything over a few hours to get responded to by email seems like an eternity to the lawyers.”

Other discipline defense attorneys also wrote to this reporter about the issue of lawyers who believed they were in compliance with the MCLE audit recently being told otherwise by the bar.
The bar’s spokeswoman said “about 30 files that were not yet complete when they received the email have since been completed/closed. In a few cases, the reminder may have crossed in the mail with audit submissions. Some had payments that were in the process of clearing or had submissions deemed incomplete. Staff is still reviewing the many last-minute submissions that were emailed or mailed on Friday.”

The bar also said it “received one complaint from an attorney whose records were mismarked; that error has been corrected and the attorney informed.”

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Ruano said that within a few days “staff will determine the final noncompliance list and will place those attorneys on involuntary inactive status effective 11/16/19; in a typical cycle that amounts to 40 to 50 people. This year likely won’t be any different.”

“Staff don’t expect to make referrals to [the Office of Chief Trial Counsel] unless last-minute forged certificates are identified,” Ruano added.

Another attorney who represents lawyers before the bar said an additional reason for lawyers’ fear about the MCLE emails was that the bar now places a consumer alert on the online bar profile of a lawyer who is placed on involuntary inactive enrollment for failure to comply with MCLE obligations. This was one of several updates to the agency’s consumer alert policy made last year.

The bar confirmed that “consumer alerts will be placed on profiles of those placed on involuntary inactive status.”

California lawyers must complete 25 hours of continuing education every three years. The state’s licensed lawyers are also split into three reporting groups based on their last name, so one group reports their hours each year and a subset of those lawyers are audited.

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.

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