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When a blue-ribbon commission met in 2015 to improve attorney ethics rules in California, a federal prosecutor named George Cardona was tasked with researching a proposed rule requiring lawyers to report misconduct by peers.
Forty-seven states already had mandatory reporting laws and two others had statutes stating that lawyers should make such reports. California was the lone exception. In the Golden State, there was no expectation — much less an obligation — that lawyers alert authorities to wrongdoing in their ranks, no matter how egregious or damaging the misconduct.
Still, after much debate, Cardona and the majority of commissioners rejected the proposal.
Seven years later, Cardona has a new job and a different opinion. As the State Bar’s chief trial counsel, or top prosecutor of attorneys, he grapples daily with the wreckage of the Tom Girardi scandal, in which one of the state’s most prominent attorneys got away with misappropriating client money for decades.
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