In an answer filed Oct. 7, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott denies all allegations in a suit the State Bar of Texas filed after the Texas Office of the Attorney General decided the Bar must release personnel memorandums and some records of the Commission for Lawyer Discipline. Abbott asked the 250th District Court in Travis County “to enter a final judgment that declares the information at issue to be subject to disclosure and orders that Plaintiff State Bar of Texas take nothing by reason of its suit,” says the Oct. 7 Defendant’s Plea to the Jurisdiction and Original Answer. OAG spokesman Tom Kelley says the answer is “standard” and it’s hard for him to predict how long it could take to resolve the case. The Bar sued on Aug. 29, alleging the AG “failed to apply the proper legal standard” in an open-records decision connected with a Texas Public Information Act request by Julie Oliver, executive director of the Texas Coalition on Lawyer Accountability. The Bar alleges it released “most” of the records, but it sought an open records decision before releasing others. In the Aug. 12 opinion, the AG’s office concluded certain records the Bar prepares and holds for the Commission for Lawyer Discipline are subject to the public information act, instead of rules of the Texas Supreme Court, and the Bar must release certain “personnel memorandums.” The Bar alleges in the petition in State Bar of Texas v. Abbott that the judiciary is not subject to the TPIA, and the Commission for Lawyer Discipline is “part of the judiciary.” The Bar alleges the personnel memorandums are for an employee who “made a lateral change, with no change in pay or grade” and release of the information “could easily be misunderstood and would likely, as a result, be highly embarrassing.” Jennifer Riggs , president and shareholder of Riggs Aleshire & Ray in Austin who represents the State Bar, says the Bar’s position is the OAG didn’t apply the correct balancing test on the employee-privacy issue and that, as part of the judiciary, the Commission for Lawyer Discipline “has the right to control its own records.”
TRLA’s David G. Hall Honored
A stalwart in the Texas legal aid community was honored at a White House event on Oct. 13 for dedicating his life to making legal services available to low-income Americans. David G. Hall , executive director of Texas RioGrande Legal Aid since 1975, was one of 16 people invited to a White House celebration of “champions of change,” which included panel discussions with U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder . The panel discussions were streamed live to law schools, including the University of Texas School of Law in Austin, Hall’s alma mater, to encourage students to consider careers in public service, he says. Hall says the kudos were not for him individually but for TRLA’s pioneering medical-legal partnerships, such as the work it has been doing with the Brownsville Community Health Center since 2008. TRLA staffs an office in the center and addresses nonmedical causes of health problems, such as shoddy housing, he said. “The idea was to approach joint medical-legal problems in a holistic fashion,” he said. During the panel discussion, Hall said that medical-legal partnerships are an “emerging movement” with about 250 partnerships around the country, compared to about 80 partnerships a few years ago. “Now it’s a structured movement, with a national organization,” he said. Hall, who works from the TRLA program headquarters in Weslaco, said he is happy to encourage students to consider a career in public law. “I came out of law school in ’69 at the height of the civil rights movement and, down here in the valley, worked with the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee,” he said. “I had originally intended to do it for a couple of years and go back to Austin. That never worked out.”
