California Courts Must Help Public Ensure Trust: Chief Justice

The California Supreme Court needs to ensure the public understands and believes courts operate fairly and independently while working to ensure lawyers and judges are conducting themselves with high ethical standards, Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero said.

Comments are due by Friday on the court’s Committee on Judicial Ethics Opinions draft formal opinion that provides guidance on how officers of the court should respond to attorney misconduct, the latest effort to address complaints over failures to rein in delinquent lawyers.

Meanwhile, Guerrero, in her first meeting with reporters on Jan. 18 since taking the middle seat on the seven-seat bench, said educating the public about how the courts work is “particularly relevant at this time when I feel there is a decline in civil discourse and, to my mind, we keep in mind the issue of judicial independence.”

For judges around the country, there have been a “lot of partisan attacks on some of the decisions we make and that might not be favorable to one side or the other,” said Guerrero, the first Latina chief justice confirmed to the state high court.

The California court system is the largest in the country, according to the Judicial Council of California, which is the courts’ policymaking body under the chief justice’s direction.

The California Supreme Court is also the parent agency for the state bar and approves lawyer discipline and licensing. The bar has come under increasing and intense attention after high-profile oversight failure of disgraced attorney Tom Girardi, who was disbarred and later twice indicted for allegedly stealing millions from clients.

The Girardi case “underscored some areas that were in need of improvement, long overdue improvement,” Guerrero said.

The court forced the bar to adopt stricter conflicts of interest codes; approved an amended rule requiring attorneys to register with the State Bar information about their practice areas, websites, the number of attorneys at their law firm/agency, whether they have had discipline imposed by another jurisdiction, and other information; and established the Client Trust Account Protection Program requiring lawyers to report annually whether they have handled client trust funds in the past year, and, if so, register their client trust accounts with the bar.

California also under a rule adopted in June 2023 that mandates reporting of suspected attorney misconduct. The provision was included in the annual license fee bill that funds the bar’s operations, which Guerrero said showed the work between the courts and lawmakers.

“We continue to monitor to ensure that we’re all doing our responsive jobs to make sure there’s adequate investigation and oversight. I think the Legislature has the same objective,” she said.

Public Access, Understanding

Courts need to explain to the public what they do and how they operate, the chief justice said.

The No. 1 goal, Guerrero said, is access, fairness, diversity, and inclusion. Independence and accountability are No. 2. Add to that, modernization, to ensure the public has access to legal services. The Judicial Council has focused on the budget and ensuring adequate, stable, and predictable funding for the judiciary, she said.

The public “may pick up on something they disagree with and view it in negative light, so what do you do about that?” Justices “share that same goal that making sure the public understands” their commitment to figuring out what is the right result and can follow the reasoning and analysis even if they disagree, she said.

And that’s why judges need to be out in the community, working on educating the public on the judiciary “so people see what we do. It’s not enough for us to sit here in our chambers and reflect on the cases before us. We have to be out and engaged in the community.”