The Board’s Work

by Michael Heatherly

Board of Governors' Meeting December 5–6, 2008 — Bellingham

At its December meeting in Bellingham, the WSBA Board of Governors (BOG) took action on recommended revisions to the lawyer discipline system and on a potential overhaul of local court rules to improve consistency statewide in civil and family law litigation.

Regarding lawyer discipline, the BOG voted on recommendations from one task force and is scheduled to consider recommendations from additional task forces at the January 23, March 6, and April 24, 2009, meetings. Those recommendations requiring a change to court rules will have to be approved by the Washington State Supreme Court before they would go into effect.

The recommendations, which range from minor adjustments in the current program to the operation and funding of the discipline system by WSBA and the Supreme Court, originated with a 2006 review of the Washington lawyer discipline system by the American Bar Association Standing Committee on Professional Discipline. The review was voluntary and had been invited by the Washington State Supreme Court. Though not binding, the ABA’s recommendations carry weight because of the organization’s nationwide involvement in lawyer disciplinary issues. Recommendations from the ABA based on its review have now been evaluated by the BOG Discipline Review Committee, which divided the work among five task forces. The task forces include WSBA leadership, judges, law professors, and private lawyers. The BOG now must endorse, reject, or modify the Discipline Review Committee’s recommendations and pass along the resulting proposals to the Supreme Court.

At the December meeting, the BOG heard the recommendations of Task Force 2, which dealt mainly with the functions of disciplinary hearing officers and of the Disciplinary Board. Not to be confused with the BOG Discipline Review Committee studying the overall issue, the Disciplinary Board is a regulatory board whose volunteer members act as the gatekeepers for disciplinary complaints, deciding whether complaints should be scheduled for a disciplinary hearing, dismissed, or resolved with an admonition. The Disciplinary Board also serves in an appellate capacity, reviewing discipline decisions issued by WSBA’s volunteer hearing officers. The BOG voted to endorse most of the recommendations submitted by the task force. Perhaps most significant was a recommendation to institute mandatory specialized adjudicative training for all hearing officers, together with the recommendation to reduce the size of the hearing officer panel from 66 to 50 in order to promote increased adjudicative experience.

Also at the December meeting, the BOG addressed another long-range project that may ultimately revamp a key set of rules. The Local Rules Task Force, created in 2006, reported that it has completed a review of the multitude of local civil and family law rules enacted in county superior courts throughout the state. The Task Force concluded that the proliferation of non-uniform local rules — which fill more than 1,700 printed pages in the 2009 Thomson-West book — creates vast confusion, particularly for attorneys who practice in more than one county. Task Force Co-chair the Honorable Charles Johnson, Washington State Supreme Court justice, told the BOG that the inconsistency in local rules constitutes an “impediment to access to justice.”

The BOG voted to extend the Task Force’s charter through December 2009 and authorize it to communicate with the courts and various judges’ organizations in an effort to build support for significant revision of the local rules, possibly including abolishment of local rules in favor of a uniform set of improved statewide rules, including a uniform set of family law civil rules.

In other business, the BOG:

•  Approved an increase from $15 to $30 in the annual WSBA active-member assessment to support the Lawyers’ Fund for Client Protection. The fund’s reserves were almost completely depleted in 2008, largely by claims against a single lawyer involved in a wide-ranging financial scheme. An alleged financial scheme by another lawyer is expected to generate large claims in the 2009 fiscal year as well.
•  Approved changes in the WSBA annual license-fee structure, beginning in 2010. Fees will continue to be due February 1 of each year. However, the current 30-day “grace period” will be eliminated, and the late penalty will be a flat 30 percent, rather than the two-tiered 20 percent/50 percent penalty imposed now. Meanwhile, the current graduated fee schedule — which has varying discounts for new members in their first five years of practice — will be simplified. Beginning in 2010, two levels of discounts will be available depending on length of time in the bar. New admittees passing the bar in the second half of a calendar year will pay 25 percent of the full active fee for that year, while those taking the exam in the first half of a year and those in their first two full calendar years after admission will pay 50 percent of the full active fee.
•  Approved the bylaws and fiscal-year 2009 budget for the proposed new Civil Rights Law Section, which would replace the Civil Rights Committee. The initial budget projects $7,125 in revenue and $6,330 in expenses.
•  Voted to sponsor legislation expected to be proposed in the 2009 State Legislature. The bills involve specific revisions to portions of the Washington Business Corporation Act, the Uniform Limited Partnership Act, the Procedure for Filing a Declaration of Completion of Probate, Military Parenting Plans, and Procedures for Automatic Restoration of Felons’ Voting Rights.

Michael Heatherly is the Bar News editor and can be reached at barnewseditor@wsba.org or 360-312-5156. For more information on the Board of Governors and Board meetings, see www.wsba.org/info/bog. For more information on issues addressed by the Board, visit the WSBA website at www.wsba.org and click on “News Flash” under “WSBA News and Information.”