State Bar leaders also voted to increase annual dues — and to stiffen the penalty for overdue payments — when they met last week.
“We coddle them,” Kinley said.
The $100 fine applies to the state’s 154,000 active attorneys. Inactive attorneys � whose annual dues go up from $100 to $125 next year � would be charged a $30 late fee.
Attorneys who have just passed the Bar would be given 45 days from the date they receive their invoice to make a payment. Late fees for those joining the Bar after June 1 would only be $50.
A majority of Bar governors favored the stiffer penalties. But Richard Crabtree, the governor from Chico, argued it wasn’t fair to hit attorneys with a late fee after they had gotten accustomed to having several months to pay.
“People are, right or wrong, relying on the grace period,” he said.
State Bar Executive Director Judy Johnson pointed out, though, that staffers not only send out several overdue warnings by mail but also place telephone calls and send e-mails to recalcitrant lawyers.
“Nordstrom’s,” she said, “does not bill like that.”
In a separate but somewhat related vote, Bar governors on Saturday also approved allowing attorneys to expunge suspensions for nonpayment of dues from their State Bar records.
To be eligible, the suspension must have lasted 90 days or less and have ended at least seven years earlier. In addition, the lawyer’s record cannot contain any other suspension.
San Francisco governor Jeffrey Bleich said it would be “unduly harsh” to keep a suspension for failing to pay dues on lawyers’ records “for the rest of their career.”
