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.