- California Rules of Professional Conduct The Rules of Professional Conduct at the State Bar of California’s web site.
- California Ethics Opinions Includes the full text of the ethics opinions issued by the State Bar of California Committee on Professional Responsibility and Conduct (COPRAC) between 1988 to the present. COPRAC plans to add the opinions issued since its inception in 1965 in the near future
- State Bar of California Hotliner
- Los Angeles County Bar Association Ethics Opinions starting from April 1994 (#476)
- San Diego County Bar Association Formal Legal Ethics Opinions
- San Diego County Bar Association Ethics Hotline
- California Code of Judicial Ethics
- State Bar of California Ethics Hotline, a confidential research service for attorneys only, helps lawyers identify and analyze their professional responsibilities
The State Bar of California is a mandatory bar association. All attorneys practicing in the state must be members.
Although they State Bar of California officials alledge they protect consumers and enforce the California Rules of Professional conduct, this is far from the truth. In reality, lawyer regulation in California is highly political– a popularity contest. The Calbar rarely investigates lawyers accused by ordinary citizens of misconduct rather, they rely on law enforcement or programs impelmented by the Bar to identify lawyer miscreents.
Consumers of legal services provided by California lawyers are urged to use extreme caution. Lawyer legislators in the state have deemed it prudent to limit professional malpractice actions against lawyers to one (1) year from the date of discovery. This of course serves California attorneys because it reduces their malpractice insurance costs and they can cut down on the number of ”frivilious suits” initiated by pesky victims clients.
Our advice. Hire an attorney to help you negotiate the engagement letter with the attorney you intend to engage. Insist on language in the engagement letter, or an agreeement appended thereto that “tolls” the statute of limitations for any action you might become entitled to bring against the attorney you are hiring. We recommend tolling all relevant California and Federal statutes for at least 10 years because it is extremely difficult to find a California attorney that will sue another California attorney. Those attorneys who do undertake actions against other California attorneys have enormous caseloads.
