WANTED: First year associate,
15 years experience req

For those of you wondering just how bad the economy is and just how hard the legal profession has been hit, it is becoming commonplace for myself and my fellow recent law school graduates to find law firm and in-house counsel job postings for entry level or first-year associate positions requiring anywhere from three to 15 years experience.

How is a recent graduate supposed to compete with that?

Nicole S. Jhonson
Los Gatos

Safety in small numbers

As you reported, the State Bar’s chief prosecutor has proposed placing a consumer alert on an attorney’s online profile page if he or she is charged with major misappropriation — taking more than $25,000 from one or more clients.

So as long as unscrupulous attorneys keep their misappropriation under $25,000, they have no fear of consumers being able to find out about it! To be fair to consumers, any proven misappropriation of clients’ funds should be reported on the offending attorney’s profile page (and that attorney should be booted from the bar).

Stephanie Doucette
San Clemente

Why $25,000?

Please tell me why the bar is considering publishing the charges only when the amount exceeds $25,000. In my opinion any misappropriation of client funds is theft, stealing, fraud or whatever other label you wish to apply and any attorney who takes money illegally from his/her client should understand one of the consequences of their actions is public disclosure to their peers. I don’t distinguish between a $2,500 thief and a $25,000 thief.

Robert W. Hodges
Walnut Creek

$1 is too much

The public should be alerted if a lawyer steals so much as $1 from clients! That the public alert only kicks in at $25K is absurd.  And that this is even up for debate is mind-boggling.

Sherre Sturm
Novato

Posts last a lifetime

What length of time is publicizing a public reproval deemed by the board of governors to be relevant to a member’s character? My only disciplinary matter in a career of 40 years is a public reproval posted over 38 years ago in 1973. Is this relevant to my contemporary character and is not relevancy fundamental to due process?  

Please consider the constitutionality and the ethics of this question and correct this oversight for all that are similarly situated.

Ted L. Mackey
Memphis, Tenn.