His downfall in December 2020 was in part triggered by a judge finding that he had misappropriated millions from families of those killed in an Indonesian plane crash. Girardi was once a top plaintiffs’ attorney and Democratic powerbroker who gained reality TV fame on “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” alongside his third wife, Erika. “We will continue to push the Bar to get back to basics and reform its discipline system once and for all.” “Victims of unscrupulous lawyers should not be re-victimized by a State Bar that too often has protected those lawyers from full scrutiny,” Stone said in a statement. Last summer, the agency also hired George Cardona, a former federal prosecutor, to serve as chief trial counsel.īut fully implementing the State Auditor’s recommendations would require about 30 new employees and $1 million in one-time funds, Duran said.Īssemblymember Mark Stone (D-Scotts Valley), who is chair of the Assembly’s Judiciary Committee, said the audit was “profoundly eye-opening.” He noted that the State Bar went about two decades without fee increases, and said some of the problems at the bar stem from this long-term underfunding at an agency that has to monitor more than 250,000 attorneys.ĭuran noted that the bar had implemented reforms that address some of the issues highlighted by the audit, including proposing a new program to monitor attorney trust accounts, increased oversight of the chief trial counsel’s office, and twice yearly reviews of closed cases by an outside auditor. Everyone deserves competent, ethical legal services,” Duran said. “It shouldn’t matter whether your lawyer is an A-list celebrity or a solo practitioner down the street. He said that staff and leadership wanted to ensure the public was better protected, and that many reforms had been implemented after the Girardi case exposed deficiencies. The chair of the State Bar’s board of trustees, Ruben Duran, said in an interview that he was troubled by the audit’s findings, calling its conclusions “some of the hardest-hitting discoveries” that the State Auditor has ever made about the agency. “When the State Bar finally examined the attorney’s bank records, it found that the attorney had misappropriated nearly $41,000 from several clients,” Tilden wrote. While working as a watchdog for the public, Tom Layton spent hours advancing the interests and political connections of one lawyer with a long record of misconduct complaints, emails obtained by The Times show.Īnother unidentified attorney had been the subject of several complaints alleging a failure to give clients money from their settlements. He became Tom Girardi’s broker to L.A.’s rich, powerful California His job was to police bad lawyers.
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