In their April 10 opinion piece, Illinois attorneys Jay Edelson and Alex Tievsky question whether the State Bar of California, and in particular its discipline office, is any different than it was during the years in which Tom Girardi was able to evade discipline. In taking issue with our recent opinion piece, they posit that it is not. We write today to assert that Edelson and Tievsky have gotten it wrong.

To frame their argument that nothing has changed, they detail issues they have had in dealing with the State Bar in relation to complaints they say they have filed against Tom Girardi and other attorneys at his firm. By law, we cannot speak to the specifics of those matters, as important as they are, but we do want to state that we disagree with the characterization by Edelson and Tievsky of many of the facts.