Welcome to the State Bar’s 2022 digital annual report

Message from the Board Chair and Executive Director

2022 was the five-year mark on a journey of the most significant structural reform in the State Bar’s history. That journey began on January 1, 2018, when the Supreme Court and the Legislature required the State Bar to focus solely on its regulatory role. The transformational change that separation reflected has been highlighted in a number of ways over these years, including in our recent actions to acknowledge and take responsibility for the State Bar’s past failures that enabled now disgraced and disbarred attorney Thomas V. Girardi to evade discipline for many years. What we learned from the repeated unethical conduct by Girardi and others at the State Bar is helping us strengthen and improve the State Bar of today and tomorrow.

Look for Five Years of Reform highlights throughout this report to learn about these changes. In the video below, former State Bar Executive Director Elizabeth Rindskopf-Parker and California Lawyers Association CEO/Executive Director Oyango Snell reflect on the momentous changes demanded by and resulting from the 2018 split of the State Bar's regulatory and bar association duties.

Our commitment to ongoing reform spurred a number of initiatives in 2022, many of which are described more fully in this report.