The chairs of California’s two legislative judiciary committees this week accused the state bar of “divert[ing] its attention from its core mission of protecting the public” by pursuing proposals to allow nonlawyers to offer a limited range of legal services.

In a Dec. 7 letter to bar leaders, Assemblyman Mark Stone, D-Scotts Valley, and Sen. Tom Umberg, D-Santa Ana, warned that “any proposal that would materially change current consumer protections for clients receiving legal services and fundamentally alter the sacrosanct principles of the attorney-client relationship would be heavily scrutinized by our committees.”