Talk:State Bar of California

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[edit] A "new" criticism of the main article (State Bar of California) (April, 2008)

I have been a member of the State Bar of California -- that is, a practicing lawyer -- since 1976. During that time, I have been actively involved as a participant in the State Bar, and I have also been involved in many debates about the State Bar in professional organizations. My criticisms about the main article are based on these experiences. I am not citing documentary sources, but I will do so later. The issues I see are as follows:

1. In my opinion and experience, the State Bar is, on the whole, a very controversial organization among practicing California lawyers. The main article does mention a very important controversy, namely the time that Governor Pete Wilson (who had flunked the California Bar Exam four times before passing it) effectively put the State Bar out of business for a few years. The article does not mention a poll which the State Bar was forced to take of its members, after legislation was passed by then-State Senator (later Superior Court Judge) Quentin Kopp, a vocal State Bar critic. The poll, taken around 1990, showed that about one-third of State Bar members favored abolition of the State Bar; as to the most frequently stated reasons why, see below. By the way, I voted not to abolish the State Bar (see below).

2. Contrary to the main article, most states do NOT have "integrated" bars, like California. In fact California is among a very small minority of states which do. I believe the exact number is no more than five. In most states, there is a divided system, by which the state issues licenses and disciplines lawyers, but all other functions are taken up by voluntary bar associations. As a result, bar dues in most states are much lower than in California (even after state-mandated reductions in dues, as a result of this controversy). Many California lawyers maintain that the State Bar is effectively controlled by small cliques of establishment lawyers, which in turn control lawyer discipline. These are the main reasons that a third of all California lawyers voted to abolish the State Bar.

3. To me the main article clearly seems to express a pro-State Bar bias. Although it has a somewhat objectve tone, it simply ignores the controversies I've mentioned, and many others which I don't have time to mention now. It also doesn't mention the long-term effect which these controversies have had. Among them, the caption on the shiny photo of the State Bar's current offices doesn't mention that the State Bar was forced to sell its traditional office building at Franklin and MacAllister in San Fran. because it ran out of money. That building was then purchased by the San Francisco Unified School District, which now uses it for office space. One would think that any objective "history" of the State Bar would mention this.

Another very important event was the abolition of the Conference of Delegates of the State Bar during the Pete Wilson controversy. This volunteer group, which represented lawyers from the entire state, was constantly passing resolutions for controversial legislation which many lawyers did not like. It was not re-established after Gray Davis restored funding of the State Bar.

4. I could go much further, but I won't now. I will mention that I voted against abolishing the State Bar because I thought the proposal was too drastic. The State Bar needs reform, not abolition.

In sum: I think that major parts of the article are not accurate.Piedmtbill (talk) 00:35, 16 April 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Piedmtbill (talk • contribs) 00:23, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

That's very interesting, but largely unsubstantiated. Wikipedia is not a soapbox or a first publisher of original research (see official policies Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not and Wikipedia:No original research). Furthermore, in researching and drafting large parts of this article, I didn't come across anything like what you're alleging (e.g. the 1990 poll, the loss of an office building, the claim that the Bar is controlled by small cliques).
Also, you're completely incorrect on the integrated bar issue. Take a look at the ABA's map of unified versus voluntary bars at http://www.abanet.org/barserv/stlobar.html. --Coolcaesar (talk) 12:22, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
Well, he says, I am not citing documentary sources, but I will do so later. Piedmtbill, if you have verifiable sources, please feel free to update the article accordingly. Coolcaesar, please make sure you're not finding yourself getting sucked into WP:OWNERSHIP. TJRC (talk) 19:49, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Drastic changes by anonymous user in single edit on 19 Dec 2005

I am reverting all those changes for the following reasons:

1. Grammar errors. Various omissions of "a," "of," and "the." Hyphens are frequently used where em dashes would be more appropriate.

2. Dialect errors. This is an article about an American public corporation and it was originally drafted in American English. To prevent revert wars, it should stay in American English. Furthermore, the citations are in the wrong style.

3. Stylistic errors. This is an encyclopedia for the general public, not for lawyers. If the public wants incredibly boring detail written in legalese, they can always go to the State Bar's Web site. The article should be concise, to the point, and accessible to the average layperson. Otherwise we end up with horribly unreadable laundry list articles like e-commerce. There is also severe overuse of the passive voice. Lawyers today are trained to write in the active voice so that they are clear, direct, and assertive.

4. Geographic errors. The reference to "this state" is too U.S-centered, especially in light of the fact that Wikipedia is intended for a global audience.

4. Failure to cite sources for bizarre assertions like the quote about "When the ABA speaks, California does not listen."

5. Just dumb errors. New York uses the ABA Model Code of Professional Responsibility while Washington State uses the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct. I found this out with a 2 minute search on Google.

Whomever our anonymous visitor is, I hope he or she is not licensed to practice in the state of California. If so, it sounds like we need to toughen up our bar exam! --Coolcaesar 07:34, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Why I took out a passage today

Today I deleted the following passage:

California State Bar Law Office Study Program

The California State Bar Law Office Study Program allows California residents to become California Attorneys with no law school, or college, assuming they meet basic educational requirements. If the candidate has no college, he or she may take and pass the CLEP, or College Level Examination Program [[1]]. The Bar candidate must study under a judge or lawyer for four years and must also pass the Baby Bar within three administrations after first becoming eligible to take the examination. California Attorney, Michael P. Ehline, [[2]] http://passthebarandbabybar.blogspot.com/ is one of only a few known attorneys on the Law Office Study Program to take and pass the CLEP. Ehline went on the Law Office Study Program and passed the California First Year Law Students Exam (Baby Bar), while on the California State Bar Law Office Study Program. Ehline passed the General Bar Exam and became a practicing attorney with no JD. Attorney Ehline claims all it takes is desire and hard work if you want to become a lawyer in the traditional way.

Therefore, you can become a lawyer in California the traditional way (Law Office Study), or by going to law school. But you must first pass the Baby Bar.

The above was deleted because it violates the Wikipedia policy of no self-promotion (Section 1.4.2 of Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not) as well as the Wikipedia:Notability guideline. Mr. Ehline is not notable, and the Law Office Study Program is so rarely used that it does not merit an entire paragraph within what is already becoming a ridiculously long section of an article that is supposed to be about the State Bar, not the California Bar Exam.--Coolcaesar 07:59, 15 November 2006 (UTC)


Why I added the Section Back About Law Office Study

First I note that the section has been removed by a person claiming to be a lawyer who attended traditional law school claiming study of law in a law office is "insignificant." The Law Office Study Program is the only available program that will enable those without money or higher education to become attorneys in California. Saying it is "insignificant" defeats the intent of this article and suppresses valuable information. Attorney Ehline is a public figure and is notorious under the Wikipedia guidelines. [[3]] Ehline has articles about him in the LA Daily Journal as well as an instruction blog on becoming an attorney with no law school or college. [[4]] [[5]] A single paragraph is insignificant when compared to the value of the content to those who don't have the education or resources the censor of the article apparrently had. ]]

See also Wikipedia:Importance, which attempts to be a generic, all inclusive definition of criteria for inclusion.

   The person has been the primary subject of multiple non-trivial published works whose source is independent of the person.

This criterion includes published works in all forms, such as newspaper articles, magazine articles, books, scholarly papers, and television documentaries except for the following: Media reprints of the person's autobiography or self-promotional works; Works carrying merely trivial coverage, such as newspaper articles that just mention the person in passing, telephone directory listings, or simple records of births and deaths.

Here, there are two independent sources about Ehline, Paul Pfau, Cal Bar Tutorial Web Page, and the Los Angeles Daily Journal Article, which are not press releases. The sources do not mention Attorney Ehline in passing and instead are about him and how he became an attorney on the Law Office Study Program. Furthermore, Ehline is not selling anything. Ehline is an attorney not engaged in the bar review or law school business. It would be great if the censor would recognize the fact that the single paragraph meets or exceeds the guidelines.

Although the article is about the Bar, the Bar exam is inseparable. Perhaps we should do a wiki on Law Office Study? If not, the single paragraph is a high value paragraph.

If not let's take it to an admin. With Resepect.

With regard to the frivolous "valuable information" argument, Wikipedia is not a soapbox or an indiscriminate collection of information, nor it it a directory. See Sections 1.4, 1.7 and 1.8 of official policy Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not. If people are interested in learning about the law office study program, that's what the Admissions section of the State Bar Web site is for. Even if Ehline's story is interesting (which I highly doubt), this article is not the place to draw attention to his meager accomplishments; several of my former law school classmates and current co-workers are ex-military who made the sacrifice to go back to school and get their bachelor's degrees and J.D.'s.
Wikipedia cannot be the first publisher of original research under the extremely strict Wikipedia:No original research policy. When the Los Angeles Times or the New York Times does a profile on Ehline, then he might be worth mentioning on Wikipedia, but his story would be covered in a separate article and then his name would be linked from here as an interesting example of a person who has actually qualified through the law office study program. But right now, an article on Mr. Ehline would not survive the rigorous Articles for deletion process.
Furthermore, Ehline is not very notable per the notability guideline; a Google search reveals only 555 hits for his name (most of which appear to be hits in lawyer directories). An example of a notable person would be Roger Traynor, whose article I did almost all the research for. Note how Traynor has been mentioned in the L.A. Times, the N.Y. Times, and the Daily Journal, plus the California Law Review and several other publications.
To be absolutely sure, I just ran searches for Ehline on two major news databases: Infotrac OneFile (operated by Thomson Gale) and ProQuest Library. Neither returned any hits. OneFile, by the way, has 57 million articles from thousands of magazines and newspapers. ProQuest is even bigger.
As for the sources cited, Paul Pfau's Web site is not a reliable source because he himself is selling a product, which in turn raises doubt as to whether the Daily Journal article itself is being reprinted accurately. And blogs are inherently unreliable as well as a poor indicator of what is really notable (since there are a lot of non-notable and bizarre conspiracy theories that are constantly exchanged through blogs).
I urge you to refrain from reinserting original research into Wikipedia, or you may be banned. The no original research policy is a core non-negotiable policy of the Wikimedia Foundation. The Arbitration Committee agreed with my assessment of the last user I encountered who was persistently unable to understand it. --Coolcaesar 07:56, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

'Why I added the Section Back About Law Office Study Again

Your insults are not well taken. Threatening to have me banned is a violation of the rules. Ehline has an article published about him a reputable Los Angeles Daily Journal Article and another independent article from Cal Bar Tutorial Review. The Daily Journal Article on his site is an exact duplicate of the original (use your eyes instead of saying it "raises doubt") (multiple sources) I respect that you went to traditional law school, but it does not give you the right to be a thought policeman and claim that the law office study is meager or insignificant.

Rather than continue threatening me and erasing valuable material, I recc we take this to a moderator to settle this once and for all! Respectfully and until then: You must not: Attempt to hold a debate on this page. Discussions take place after acceptance, not before: There is no need for, desire to read, or acceptance of lengthy debates on the merit of mediation. If you wish to debate on whether to mediate, do it on the article's talk page, not here. Move or remove any content under any circumstances. Content removal is restricted to members of the Mediation Committee.


I further note that I did remove the blog so your argument about blogs was improper because it had been removed.


REQUEST FOR MEDIATION Coolcesar please sign themediation request and stop censoring the page.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_mediation/State_Bar_of_California

One, I was not insulting you, I was denigrating the quality of your edits (an important distinction). Two, the fact that you took my constructive criticism so personally strongly suggests that you are Mr. Ehline himself (or a close friend or family member), which constitutes an obvious conflict of interest (generally, Wikipedia editors are not supposed to insert or edit content about themselves). Three, Cal Bar Tutorial Review is a commercial service that is not a neutral academic publisher but rather a self-interested commercial enterprise; this is an important difference in many areas of the law, such as copyright and criminal law. Anyway, I concur that this should be taken to mediation and I'll raise these issues there.--Coolcaesar 06:05, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

:One, you were insulting the study of law in a law office, claiming it is insignificant and meager. That is not your job and it insults every person who is poor or otherwise cannot afford law school, or simply who does not have the educational background to be accepted into law school. What amazes me is that you, an attorney, waste so much time trying to impose your will upon people's thoughts and opinions. Shouldn't you be working on cases?

Two: Ehline is one of only 64 people to have achieved becoming an attorney on the law office study program. That in and of itself makes him notable. I have not found much information about anyone else who also has a published article in an official Daily Journal Article. [[6]]

Ehline did not charge me for information on this program.

I attempted to reason with you and you ignored my requests and continually denigrated the program and deleted the posts after I asked for arbitration - all in violation of Wiki guidelines.

I still would like to resolve this issue with you without arbitration. Is there a way we can change the paragraph to satisfy your need to censor?


Respectfully

[edit] All or nothing?

I noticed your dispute through a comment Coolcaesar made on the Anaheim Hills talk page. As a young lawyer myself, I thought I'd throw in my two cents.

It seems to me that the section on this alternative path to bar admission is worthwhile, if only because it's so unusual (I'm fairly certain that my own state, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, doesn't have any similar options). That being said, I don't see any reason why there's a need to mention a particular individual who used this path to become an attorney. While this particular path to admission may be noteworthy, the individuals who take advantage of it are not. Additionally, the quote at the end has no business being in an encyclopedia.

Although I know this is in mediation, I'm going to try and edit the paragraph. If either you think it doesn't work, feel free to revert it, and I won't say anything further. JCO312 15:24, 21 November 2006 (UTC)


[edit] RESPONSE TO ALL OR NOTHING

I agree, so I removed the name. But I left in the Daily Journal Article becuase there is simply not a lot of information avaiable about the program. I further note I will seek to have any person banned who further alters the article, as there is a pending arbitration and the post "shall" not be altered when that happens. Thanks.

There was never a pending arbitration. There was a request for mediation, which was rejected.JCO312 13:30, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
I concur. Clearly whomever this issuethewrit fellow is (who doesn't know how to sign his posts), he or she does not understand the difference between mediation and arbitration. The mediation request was rejected and no request has been filed with ArbCom, which would be premature as we have not yet had a complete breakdown in communications. Anyway, I don't mind the phrasing of the now-truncated paragraph as it currently stands. --Coolcaesar 07:41, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

I have read through this entire section twice now and have not found a single, solitary statement by Coolcaesar indicating that this program is "insignificant" or "meager". This is the claim made by the unnamed individual who seems to have some vested interest in leaving mention of Mr. Ehline in the article. Personally, I find absolutely no value in mentioning this particular attorney in the article. It does absolutely nothing to enhance or add to my understanding of the State Bar of California, or this particular program. Perhaps a mention that a certain, limited number of individuals have ever succeeded in being admitted through this program enhances the article, but mention of this or any other individual does not. I find the tone of the unnamed individual's email to be somewhat odd, considering the intended nature of Wikipedia. Threatening. Argumentative. I read with much interest the information regard this program. As a California attorney, I have personally been in discussions on a number of occasions with both attorneys and non-attorneys where this subject has come up. I knew that there was some historical basis for admitting attorneys to the bar who had not attended a formal law school. I did not know whether the practice still existed or how it worked. Now I do. Again, whoever the unnamed individual is here, he has entirely and suspiciously misquoted Coolcaesar and has attributed to him language ("insignificant"; "meager") which he has never made. I see absolutely nothing in any of the posts from Coolcaesar which even comes close to disparaging admission to the bar through this program, or promotes law school attendance as a better route. I challenge anyone reading this to go back and confirm what I am saying here. - Kahanamoko Kahanamoko 06:50, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Removing more weird passages

I removed the following passages today:

Passage 1:

Well known, however, is the story of Maxcy Filer, who took the Bar examination twice a year for almost 25 years before passing on the 48th attempt in February 1991 [1] As of 24 October 2007, Mr Filer is still practicing law. [2]

Passage 2:

While predictions circulate regarding which of the subjects will be tested on the essay portion of the examination, only one subject has consistently made its appearance on the essay portion of the examination during its past 15 administrations: Professional Responsibility. Interestingly, although one of the two Performance Tests on the July 2007 exam dealt with Professional Responsibility, none of the six essays covered this topic.

Passage 3:

(n.b., the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico both have lower pass rates -- however, the applicant test pools in these jurisdictions are atypical, due to local admission rules which makes comparisons with the other bar exams administered in the 50 states meaningless).

All three passages violate Wikipedia:Notability in and of themselves. Passages two and three rely heavily on weasel words (a key sign of unreliability) and also violate core policy Wikipedia:No original research, in that they attempt a new synthesis of information that itself is not first published in a reliable source. In turn, they also violate Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not. All three passages have a sharply different tone from the rest of the article, apparently because they were written by someone who has not received proper academic training in composing formal written English. Such training is required of all University of California graduates through the Reading & Composition credit requirement (which leads me to suspect that the writer is either not a UC graduate or barely passed their R&C courses). Finally, passage one is improperly sourced—the citations are cruder then those seen in most blogs. If anyone countermands these deletions without responding to these issues, I will be happy to countermand their reinsertions. Any questions? --Coolcaesar (talk) 06:20, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

I really need help on how to file a complaint my present attorney who has not done a damn thing for my case until it was to late for me to hire another attorney. How would I get a complaint form so I can try to correct the mess that this attorney has done to me?


Please help —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.102.250.155 (talk) 06:44, 7 June 2008 (UTC)