Two Northern California attorneys
win board elections
A Granite Bay attorney will serve a second
three-year term and a San Francisco attorney will join the Board of Trustees
this fall, as the result of elections held in Districts 1 and 3 last month.
 |
Mendoza |
Trustee Joanna
Mendoza, 52, was re-elected in District 3, which
covers Alpine, Amador, Butte, Calaveras, Colusa, El Dorado, Glenn, Lassen,
Modoc, Mono, Nevada, Placer, Plumas, Sacramento, San Joaquin, Shasta, Sierra,
Siskiyou, Sutter, Tehama, Trinity, Yolo and Yuba counties. Mendoza is a sole
practitioner who specializes in intellectual property and business litigation.
Mendoza made history by becoming the first
trustee elected to a second three-year term since governance changes that went
into effect in 2012 allowed for re-election or reappointment.
“To create change, it takes
time and opportunity to build relationships with the critical stakeholders both
inside and outside the bar, as well as time to understand a very complex
organization,” she said in her candidate statement.
 |
SeLegue |
Sean
M. SeLegue, 49, of San Francisco, was elected in
District 1, which covers Alameda, Contra Costa, Del Norte, Humboldt, Lake,
Marin, Mendocino, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Solano and Sonoma counties.
SeLegue is a partner at Arnold & Porter, where he specializes in appeals
and attorney liability and ethics.
In his candidate statement, SeLegue promised
to ask the hard questions demanded by the board’s oversight role.
“Let’s face it: Our status as a
self-regulating profession is in peril, as it should be if we cannot step up to
the plate,” he said. “We need to reconsider the status quo when appropriate and
not hew to the corrosive concept: ‘This is how we’ve always done it.’ ”
Turnout for the election was 11 percent of
those attorneys eligible to cast votes. About 62 percent of the votes were cast
electronically, and the rest came in by mail.
The Board
of Trustees is the governing and
policymaking body of the 257,000-member organization. The board meets approximately eight times a year to
consider organizational, policy and regulatory matters.
New trustees, including those who are appointed this year, will take their
oaths at the State
Bar Annual Meeting, which lasts from Sept. 29 to
Oct. 2, 2016.