When a blue-ribbon commission met in 2015 to improve attorney ethics rules in California, a federal prosecutor named George Cardona was tasked with researching a proposed rule requiring lawyers to report misconduct by peers. Forty-seven states already had mandatory reporting laws and two others had statutes stating that lawyers should make such reports. California was the lone exception. In the Golden State, there was no expectation — much less an obligation — that lawyers alert authorities to wrongdoing in their ranks, no matter how egregious or damaging the misconduct. Still, after much debate, Cardona and the majority of commissioners rejected the proposal. Seven years later, Cardona has a new job and a different opinion. As the State Bar’s chief trial counsel, or top prosecutor of attorneys, he grapples daily with the wreckage of the Tom Girardi scandal, in which one of the state’s most prominent attorneys got away with misappropriating client money for decades.“One of my overriding goals is to kind of restore confidence in the discipline system. And I think, ultimately, an adoption of a rule like this might help that, ” Cardona told The Times recently. California’s legal community, which with 266, 000 lawyers is the nation’s largest, has long resisted a mandatory reporting law. Some opponents have cited the state’s uniquely broad client confidentiality obligations, while others express a general disdain for telling on any fellow member of the profession, regardless of how compromised. The feeling that reporting unethical behavior is disloyal is so prevalent in California that many attorneys and the State Bar, the public agency that polices the legal field, have used mob parlance to refer to the requirement as the “snitch” or “rat” rule. That contrasts with the prevailing view in other states. In Louisiana, where a version of the rule has been on the books for 35 years, “it’s not the subject of a lot of conversation or angst, ” said Charles Plattsmier, who has been the top prosecutor at the Louisiana Office of Disciplinary Counsel since 1996. Lawyers “recognize it’s a duty they have and we get pretty good compliance. ”Though the number of mandatory reports he receives is small, he said, “it is usually some of the most significant reporting we get. It alerts us to some of the most serious misconduct that we need to act on quickly to alert the public. ”In Girardi’s case, there was evidence in court cases as early as the 1990s that he was mishandling settlement money and stiffing colleagues out of legal fees, but fellow attorneys have said they were reluctant to turn in the powerful litigator to the State Bar. Girardi cultivated influence with the agency’s investigators and other officials and avoided any discipline until his firm’s collapse two years ago. In fact, it was lawyers not in California but in a state with a tough reporting law — Illinois — that ultimately brought down Girardi.
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