Report 2022-031 Recommendation 6 Responses

Report 2022-031: The State Bar of California: It Will Need a Mandatory Licensing Fee Increase in 2024 to Support Its Operations (Release Date: April 2023)

Recommendation #6 To: Bar of California, State

To ensure that it can correctly calculate the timeliness of its administration of external disciplinary cases, the State Bar should immediately review the accuracy of the data in its Odyssey system for these cases and should correct any errors. Unless required, it should not report data from the system to the public and the Legislature until it verifies the data's accuracy.

6-Month Agency Response

The State Bar finished auditing for Odyssey data, including 186 conflict cases. The audit covered cases closed in the first half of 2022 and, pending cases. In total, 353 cases were examined, including pending cases and those closed between January 1, 2022, and June 30, 2023. Staff verified opening and closing dates for each case with the corresponding complaint and closing documents. Additionally, they verified that each case had a date entry indicating its assignment to SDTC.

Of all cases reviewed, 188 (or 53%) required no corrections. The most common errors were inaccurate case opening dates 126 cases, (36% of the total) had opening dates that were off by 1-3 days. Closing dates were corrected for 17 case (5% of the audited sample). Staff were unable to confirm closing dates for four cases due to missing closing documents. Dates indicating assignment to SDTC were corrected for three cases. Another 31 cases (or 9%) required corrections unrelated to opening, closing or assigned dates. For example, some cases had multiple corrections. Please see the document "Rule 2201 full audit case log with notes for corrections made."

California State Auditor's Assessment of 6-Month Status: Fully Implemented

60-Day Agency Response

The State Bar is auditing Odyssey data for the 168 conflict cases closed between July 1, 2022, and April 30, 2023. This initial phase of the data audit project will be completed by the end of July 2023, and any necessary changes will be made in Odyssey. The next step is to audit the data for pending cases and cases closed between January 1, 2022, and June 30, 2023 (135 cases). The State Bar plans to complete this second phase of data validation by September 2023. Once validated, the data from January 2022 onwards will be used to create and publish the 2201 program quarterly dashboards.

California State Auditor's Assessment of 60-Day Status: Pending

All Recommendations in 2022-031

Agency responses received are posted verbatim.