A LITTLE BIT ABOUT ME

Well, where to start?  There’s so much to say, but here’s just a little background info: I was born in Brooklyn, N.Y. in November of 1948.

                It’s not like nothing happened in the intervening twenty-five years, but I graduated from UCLA Law School in 1973 and passed the Bar and was admitted in California that same year.  I was also admitted to practice in the United States District Court for the Central District of California, and Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in 1975.

                I originally went to work for the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles in 1974, and spent seven and a half years with that organization.  With Legal Aid I held several positions including Staff Attorney, Clinical Supervising Attorney (in conjunction with UCLA where I held the title of Lecturer of Law) and Directing Attorney of the Venice branch office.

                In 1981, I opened my own practice in West Covina, California, not far from where I had grown up and had gone to high school.  Although I had represented many professionals before various California licensing agencies in the 1980’s, mine was a general practice.  My initial contact with State Bar disciplinary law was probably like most, that is, reading the Bar discipline reports in various professional journals, and sweating at the thought of how devastating it must have been for those disciplined attorneys to deal with proceedings examining their professional and ethical conduct. 

                I was formally initiated into the State Bar disciplinary system several years later.  At the end of the 1980’s, the State Bar discipline system was being overhauled and professionalized. Full-time, paid judges were slated to replace the former all-volunteer, referee system.  Relying on my experience as a compensated Hearing Examiner for various local government entities, I applied to be one of the new judges.  And while I was not selected to be a full time judge, I was appointed to serve as a compensated Judge Pro Tem on the State Bar Court, a position I held from 1990-1995.  In that capacity I presided over numerous discipline and reinstatement trials, and conducted countless settlement conferences aimed at resolving discipline cases.

                I resigned my judgeship in early 1995, and began to concentrate my practice in the area of all aspects of attorney licensing law, and have represented my attorney clients in the Hearing and Review Departments of the State Bar Court, and before the California Supreme Court.  In addition to having forged good personal and professional relationships with both professional and lay staff within the Court, and with the State Bar Office of Trials (prosecutor’s office) and defense counsel in my years as a judicial officer, I have a broad range of general legal experience as a solo practitioner.  Such broad-based, experience is often helpful in my representation of my clients as issues of general substantive and procedural law (relating to my clients’ representation of their clients) are often involved in attorney discipline cases.  I would estimate that 95% of my practice is concentrated in attorney licensing.

                If is often said that attorney licensing law is sui generis (that my be a polite way of saying it is a law unto itself!)  I have found it to be a fascinating, challenging and fulfilling area of practice.