February 22, 2013 - Oregon State Bar

BOG Agenda Memo — BOG Role in Reinstatements
February 22, 2013 Page 2
Recently, some BOG members questioned the need for the BOG to review formal
applications that presented no complex or difficult issues. At the January Governance and
Strategic Planning Committee meeting, Disciplinary Counsel Jeff Sapiro suggest two
alternatives:
1. delegate the routine application to the Executive Director, subject to referral to
the BOG when there is a question, as is now the process for informal
applications, or
2. put routine applications on the BOG’s consent agenda so that discussion will
occur only if a BOG member requests it.
After discussion, the Governance and Strategic Planning Committee voted unanimously in favor
of the first option, and staff has drafted proposed amendments to Title 8 of the Bar Rules of
Procedure to accomplish that objective. The amendments will
• Allow the ED to make favorable recommendations directly to the Supreme
Court,
• Allow the ED to include conditions as part of the recommendation (mostly to
address the “make the applicant get CLE hours” situation),
• All the Ed to reinstated an applicant temporarily under BR 8.7,
• Direct the ED to refer questionable applications to the BOG, and
• Reserve to the BOG the authority to recommend against reinstatement.
Staff also suggests that if the Supreme Court approves the proposed amendments to the Bar
Rules of Procedure, then OSB Bylaw 6.103 should be repealed. The one-meeting notice rule for
BOG review of applications will no longer apply and the second part of the bylaw merely
restates what is in BR 8.1 about the possibility of an application being required to take the bar
exam or earn CLE credits before reinstatement.
The one piece we haven’t worked out is whether to build in some time to publish the
names of formal reinstatement applications and allow a comment period before processing
them. The current one-meeting notice process coupled with the BOG’s alternate-month
meeting schedule means that a formal reinstatement application may be pending for four or
more months. That is sufficient time for an announcement to be published in the Bulletin. As
envisioned under the new process, the application can be recommended to the Supreme Court
as soon as the bar’s investigation is complete. While the quicker process may be appealing to
many applicants, it is not necessarily going to give us the opportunity to solicit comments from
the membership. The board may wish to incorporate a 30 day notice and comment period into
the proposed process. In that event, new BR 8.1(e) could be modified slightly to read as follows:
(e) Review by Executive Director; Referral of Application to Board. Notice of and
requests for comment on applications filed under BR 8.1 shall be published on the bar’s
web site for a period of 30 days. If, after review of an application filed under BR 8.1 and
any information gathered in the investigation of the application, the Executive Director
determines that the applicant has made the showing required by BR 8.1(b), the
Executive Director shall recommend to the Supreme Court, as provided in BR 8.7, that