The California State Bar should not have implied that a third-party website broke the law when it posted records exposed by a flaw in the agency’s website, the bar’s top executive said Thursday.

In a letter to the First Amendment Coalition, bar Executive Director Leah Wilson said a Feb. 26 press release, which called judyrecords.com’s posting of 260,000 confidential attorney records an “unlawful display of nonpublic data,” was wrong. The bar last week acknowledged that judyrecords did not hack the bar’s computer system but instead gathered records that were publicly exposed.