I don’t know if snark has any place this week given what’s going on in Ukraine. It’s hard to be irreverent these days. We all should educate ourselves, if we haven’t already, how perilous these times are and for us dinosaurs, even though most of us were born after World War II, we well remember the Cold War. I will never forget the image of the then premier of the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, which existed until its dissolution in 1991) pounding his shoe (I am not making this up) on the table at the United Nations. However, just like everything political, some deny that he pounded his shoe, just like there’s controversy as to whether he ever precisely said that he would bury the United States.
Everyone needs to brush up on history, which is one of the reasons why a liberal arts education has its place. Just as Germany felt humiliated by the Treaty of Versailles and the economic deprivation that followed, Vladimir Putin apparently also felt humiliated that people would prefer democracy to one-man rule. So, as one person suggested on Twitter, rather than doom scrolling social media, invest your time in some “doom reading history.”
Several suggestions: “Bloodlands, Europe between Hitler and Stalin” by Timothy Snyder, “On Tyranny,” also by Snyder. Check out books by Anne Applebaum on authoritarianism, including her most recent one, “Twilight of Democracy, the Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism.” Applebaum’s book is especially chilling when political leaders in our own country praise authoritarian leaders elsewhere. No need to name them; you know who they are.
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For those of you not of dinosaurial vintage, know that history repeats itself, and if we don’t remember it, we will be bound to repeat it. Parallels too obvious to ignore. We are seeing that now. How would this country respond if ever faced with a situation such as Ukraine now faces? Yes, I get that geography plays a part, but given the divisiveness over the COVID-19 vaccine, I wonder if we could all pull together to face a common enemy. I thought COVID-19 was that, but obviously I was mistaken.
I can’t resist, so now on to snark, but a little less so. One of my favorite topics is the State Bar of California and I often think it’s like the gang that can’t shoot straight. But I think that the bar may be on its way to some redemption, at least IMHO. John Eastman, formerly dean and professor at Chapman University Law School, is under investigation for his advice to President Donald Trump and others about how the 2020 election could be overturned. Yay!
Perhaps the state bar got the message when Chapman turned over a bunch of Eastman’s emails to the January 6th commission along with a number of folks who brought published reports of Eastman’s conduct to the bar’s attention. I think there’s a difference between free speech and advocating the overturn of a free election (although some still claim that the former president should still be the current president, but I won’t go there now). I always thought that a lawyer’s duty is to uphold the law. Am I wrong about that? Remember, I graduated from a nonranked law school, now closed, but I understand enough.
I’m not done with the state bar yet. Last week, there was a data breach. Here’s the first paragraph of the bar’s news release issued on Saturday, February 26:
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The State Bar announced today that it is taking urgent action to address a breach of confidential attorney discipline case data that it discovered on February 24. A public website that aggregates nationwide court case records was able to access and display limited case profile data on about 260,000 nonpublic State Bar attorney discipline case records, along with about 60,000 public State Bar Court case records. The site also displays confidential court records from other jurisdictions.
Shall I say “uh-oh”? “Whoops?” This data was supposed to be confidential. So much for that.
The bar says it discovered the leak on February 24, and that it will comply with all rules and statutes governing notification. The data has been taken down from the website on which it appeared, and the bar says that the leak was due to a previously unknown security issue, not a hack.
And last, but certainly not least, is the state bar shoveling sh*t against the tide? The chairs of the California Assembly and Senate Judiciary committees pushed back against the bar’s regulatory sandbox proposal which would have, among other things, allowed paraprofessionals to handle some matters. Now the state bar is busy back-filling and reformulating both the composition of the Closing the Gap Working Group and its charter. The main issue that the working group is grappling with is how to expand access to justice through technology. The unenviable task is to figure out how to integrate legal technology with the practice of law so that the underserved can be better served, or, at the least, served, without raising the ire of attorneys, the Legislature, and the state Supreme Court. Not easy to do with these diverse stakeholders, but Utah is doing it.
Jill Switzer has been an active member of the State Bar of California for over 40 years. She remembers practicing law in a kinder, gentler time. She’s had a diverse legal career, including stints as a deputy district attorney, a solo practice, and several senior in-house gigs. She now mediates full-time, which gives her the opportunity to see dinosaurs, millennials, and those in-between interact — it’s not always civil. You can reach her by email at [email protected].