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21 B. Rep. 1 (1992-1993)

handle is hein.barjournals/breport0023 and id is 1 raw text is: Non-Prlk Org. U.S.Postage PAID Washingto. D.C. pemikNo 8655 Vol. 21/No. 1 August/September 1992 Barpreort The Official Newspaper of the District of Columbia Bar Contributions shortfall The D.C. Bar's Public Service Activi- ties Corporation (PSAC) has experi- encedasignificantshortfall involuntary contributions from members returning their 1992-93 dues statements. The generosity of those who contrib- ute to the PSAC translates into equal access to justice for the low-income and indigent citizens In our community. We simply couldn'tmaintain theseprograms without the membership'ssupport,said PSAC President Jamie S. Gorelick. Tax-deductiblecontributionstothePSAC may be sent to: RDC. Bar Public Service ActivitiesCorporation,cloPresidentJamie S. Gorelick, 1707 L St., N.W, Sixth Floor, Washington, D.C. 20036-4203. D.C. professic Thousands of professionals in the District of Columbia, including all members of the D.C. Bar, were to have met a July 30 filing deadline with the District of Columbia De- partment of Finance and Revenue for a newly expanded nonregulatory professional license in the District of Columbia. The license requirement and $250 annual fee, enacted earlier this year by the Council of the District of Columbia, is projected to raise $2 million for the District's general operating budget in 1992 and $4.5 million for 1993, according to Jeffrey Saltzberg, attorney ad- Bar sends its study of admission rules to Court of Appeals The D.C. Court of Appeals is considering recommendations of the D.C. Bar's Board of Governors and the Bar's Admissions Task Force that could make it harder for lawyers who have not taken the D.C. Bar examina- tion to be admitted to practice in the District of Columbia Bar. After reviewing the report of its Special Bar Admissions Task Force, the Bar's Board voted to submit the report to the Court with- out specifically endorsing its findings, but did recommend that the Court consider re- quiring all new admittees successfully com- plete a course on both the D.C. Rules of Professional Conduct and D.C. practice. The Board also recommended that individuals admitted by virtue of passing the D.C. Bar examination should not be required to com- plete such a course to the extent that the examination tested those subjects. The Task Force, chaired by Board mem- ber Cornish F. Hitchcock, spent over a year reviewing the experience regarding motion admissions in the D.C. Bar, with particular attention to the effect of a 1983 rule change that allows lawyers to be admitted on motion with a score of 133 on the Multistate Bar Examination in another jurisdictiop. In 1983, 25 percent of new admittees came in on Continued on page 6 Bar revamps its public service efforts Hoping to better meet the growing unmet legal needs of the District's indigent popula- tion with its limited financial resources, the D.C. Bar's Public Service Activities Corpo- ration (PSAC) has begun a major reorgani- zation, its first since it was created in the mid-1970s. Supported exclusively by nondues rev- enues consisting primarily of voluntary con- tributions of individual members and law firms, the PSAC has operated the Lawyer Referral and Information Service (LRIS), which puts fee-paying clients in touch with qualified counsel; the Pro Bono Program (known as the Pro Bono Attorney Recruit- ment Team, or PART), which recruits law firms to accept pro bono cases in specific areas of the law and provides substantive onal license fe viser for the Office of Audit Compliance and Investigation Administration. The fee for 1992 was prorated to $125 and was to be paid by July 30. Previously, theDistrictof Columbia's license requirement for the legal profession covered only equity partners and sole practi- tioners. Individuals able to document their payment of that $100 fee for 1992 before April 29, 1992, will not be subject to the new fee until 1993, which will be due by Nov. 30. Enactment of the expanded licensing re- quirement this past April prompted the D.C. Bar's Board of Governors to call a special meeting of the active membership in order to gain authority to lobby on the issue. The Bar is specifically prohibited from speak- ing on pending legislation without mem- bership authorization. With affirmative votes of the membership on May4andagainon June26, theBar's Board has sought to add exemptions from the fee for active Bar members who have not practiced in the District of Columbia for the past 12 months and for members who provide legal counsel to the poor. Those efforts continue. Currently, exemptions are available only for government employees, international organi- zation employees, and inactive and judicial members of the D.C. Bar. Individuals who file forandare grantedexemptions,however,stand to lose them if they perform professional ser- vices outside their exempt employment, even on a pro bono basis, Saltzberg explained. At a seminar sponsored by the D.C. Bar Taxation Section just days before the filing deadline, representatives of the D.C. gov- emnment told Bar members that they were expected to file by the deadline, even though forms had been distributed just one month earlier. Late applications could be subject to penalties of as much as $300 per day, with each day being aseparate infraction, Saltzberg explained. Even if no fees are due as a result of exemptions, the forms are required to be filed on a timely basis, he said. Because this is the first year ofa comnprehen- sive professional license fee in the District and because the materials required a short response time, a number of individuals were expected to file late, according to Saltzberg, who added that training for individual lawyers willing to accept pro bono cases; and the Community Education Project (CEP), which sends law- yers into the adult community to discuss legal rights and responsibilities in specific areas. Lastyear,PSACoverallreceived$487,426 in contributions from individuals and firms to operate its programs. Under the new structure, PSAC will have two divisions; the Pro Bono Program, an effort to assist lawyers in meeting their professional obligations to provide legal counsel to the community's low-income and indigent resi- dents; and the Lawyer Referral Service, a pro- gramdesignedtomatchlawyers withfee-paying clients seeking appropriate counsel. It is hoped that the LRS ultimately will be self-supporting. Acting director of the new LRS is H.A. e takes effect each late application received with explanation would be considered individually. We will use a 'reasonable cause' criterion in determining whether to waive penalties. We will look at circumstances around late payment of any fee and decide if it is reason- able cause for that late payment, Saltzberg said at the Bar seminar. Saltzberg also said that individuals claim- ing exemptions as judicial or inactive mem- bers must have been in that membership status as of June 30, 1992, to qualify in the first year. Individuals who changed their sta- tus to inactive after that date would not be eligible for exemptions from the first year's payment of $125 but could apply for an exemption for the 1993 fee of $250. Although the Department has not yet pub- lished regulations on the new license require- ments, its representatives said they expected that inactive or judicial D.C. Bar members who change to active status at any time dur ing the year will file for the license and pay the full annual fee within 60 days of that membership status change. Tony Cramer, formerly director of the PSAC. Acting director of Pro Bono Programs is Maureen T. Thornton, who has been work- ing on a number of pro bono programs for the Bar as a consultant during the past few years. Cramer and Thornton also are members of the D.C. Bar. Both positions will be filled perma- nently later this year (see notice on page 5). ThereorganizationwasapprovedbytheBar's Board of Governors after it received a report of its Public Service Activities Corporation Re- view Committee.Under the leadership offormer D.C. Barpresident Stephen J. Pollak, that com- mittee spent nearly two years reviewing the operation of the PSAC with a goal of deciding what the organization's missions should be and how they should best be carried out. That report recommended the creation of the stand-alone, separately administered, self- supporting lawyer referral service with a sole purpose of matching fee-paying clients with lawyers seeking to serve those clients, and a redesigned, more pro-active pro bono pro- gram that would aggressively seek to identify and serve significant unmet legal needs in the community by recruiting members of the Bar in significant numbers in order to meet those needs. Clinics will be established to facilitate matching lawyers with needy clients. The Information portion of the former LRIS- callers seeking straightforward answers to basic legal questions-will be served through an expanded voice mail system under the Pro Bono Program's auspices, which would be supplemented by printed materials. There are large, and growing, unmet needs for pro bono legal services in the low income community of the District of Columbia. The 31,257 members of the D.C. Bar practicing law privately and in government in the Dis- trict of Columbia constitute the major re- source for meeting these needs. PSAC's highest priority should be to bring a greater number of these attorneys to volunteer more time in providing pro bono legal services to more members of the low income commu- nity, the report stated. EXPLAINING THE DETAILS of the recently enacted nonregulatory professional license fee in the District of Columbia are Linda P. Holman (right foreground), supervisory attorney at the D.C. Department of Finance and Revenue and Jeffrey A. Saltzberg, (to Holman's right) attorney adviser at the Office of Audit Compliance and Investigation Administration, who participated in a seminar on the new fee sponsored by the D.C. Bar Taxation Section just days before the fee went into effect.

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