At SmartBean®, our mission is to deliver reliable, accurate daily bookkeeping services. With a personal touch, we inform firms of their business’s financial health to empower informed decision-making when completing legal accounting. In the same way, knowing resources and any expectations of your firm is beneficial in a preventative manner.
Understanding these aspects of business operation correlates directly to the broader scope of legal accountability and ethical practices, which are central to the mission of the State Bar of California.
The mission of the State Bar of California is to protect the public. This includes licensing, attorney regulation, and ethical law practices for law firm accounting. The Bar oversees the legal profession and licenses over 270,000 attorneys to serve Californians across the state.
In a statement on the State Bar of California's website, the organization states that “The State Bar of California’s mission is to protect the public and includes the primary functions of licensing, regulation, and discipline of attorneys; the advancement of the ethical and competent practice of law; and support of efforts for greater access to, and inclusion in, the legal system.”
The California State Bar, which originated in 1927, licenses roughly 2270,000 attorneys and annually investigates over 16,000 licensee misconduct complaints. Five key values that serve as the foundation of the State Bar Uphold the Bar: clarity, Investing in Our People, Excellence, Respect, and a Growth Mindset.
If the State Bar of California governs the legal profession, making decisions on tax law and accounting and the professionals within, who or what is the State Bar’s governance? There is an entire system behind the State Bar of California, with rules that govern the State Bar itself.
There are three main rules broken down into sectors to regulate it.
The State Bar has multiple initiatives in place to continue nurturing growth in the legal profession. They all point back to the initial mission of protecting the public and touch on various areas in which the organization believes the profession can expand. From law firm accounting to the spread of awareness and discipline, the Bar is dedicated to growing the reputation of the legal community.
The Five Year Goals, initiated in 2022, highlight the inclusion initiatives, engaging Bar partners and stakeholders to spread awareness and compliance, attorney discipline, and increasing accessibility to legal advice and services.
To increase the likelihood of success, many of these initiatives consist of benchmarks for effectiveness, policy change, diversity, and inclusion for both the strategy and implementation steps. The newest goals are to protect the public via:
The Client Trust Account Protection Program aims to protect the public in a slightly different way.
More specifically, ‘public’ now refers to clients of licensed attorneys requiring funds to be held for services. Given the infancy and specificity of the accounting law program, there are slightly different approaches and benchmarks to its regulation. In the future, some of the upgrades to the program regulating firm’s law firm accounting practices include:
Reporting to the bar requires attorneys and law firms to follow the rules and regulations to remain in compliance with not only legal accounting and record-keeping but also the additional guidelines and any updates mandated by the State Bar. This includes how you hold funds for your clients.
Let our team at SmartBean® do the bookkeeping for you! With a personal touch, our team specializes in up-to-date guidance that is affordable and fits your practice's needs (and budget).
Call us at 714-503-810, or start by filling out this quick survey for a complimentary consultation today!
