Celebrity LA Lawyer Tom Girardi’s Lavish Lunches and Parties for State Bar of California Labeled ‘A Mistake’

The audit was performed by Alyse Lazar, a Thousand Oaks attorney who was a supervising prosecutor for the bar in the 1990s and who already conducts random reviews of closed discipline cases, according to Teresa Ruano, a bar spokeswoman. Lazar, who declined to comment, was ultimately paid more than $25,000 for reviewing the Girardi complaints, which began March 15.

Ruano said she could not disclose specific information about the number or nature of the complaints that were part of the audit and maintained that the final report was shielded by attorney-client privilege.

“The details of the audit are confidential,” Ruano said.

The two state lawmakers who chair a pair of legislative committees that oversee the State Bar told The Times that it was imperative for the audit to be released to the public.

“This is not like a national security issue,” Umberg said. “The revelation of this … will help us to protect consumers. Unless the nuclear codes are somewhere in there, I think they could release most of it.”

Umberg, who is also a practicing attorney, said transparency was essential to restoring the credibility and trust of the bar. He noted that fellow attorneys and members of the community repeatedly ask how lawmakers will respond to the apparent lapses in discipline in the Girardi case.

“The Girardi debacle — it’s an embarrassment to the entire profession,” Umberg said. “The question is: Have there been other failures of a similar nature?”

Assemblyman Mark Stone (D-Scotts Valley) said the audit’s findings exposed “pervasive and institutional shortcomings” in how attorneys are regulated.

Stone, who chairs the Assembly Judiciary Committee, likewise called for disclosure of the audit report and demanded “a full audit of the Girardi case by an outside entity.” Such a review would be used by the Legislature, Supreme Court and the public to illuminate what went wrong, he said.

“I am very concerned that the Bar made numerous errors and oversights in the Girardi case over a four-decade period,” Stone said. “These mistakes endangered the public, allowed Girardi to prey on vulnerable clients, and have seriously undermined confidence in the competence of the State Bar.”

Numerous trustees of the bar declined to comment to The Times. According to the news release, the trustees have asked that bar employees “investigate new and innovative means of regulating and monitoring attorney-client trust accounts to prevent misappropriations from occurring in the first place.”

The agency said it was also considering the hiring of accounting experts to examine the “high-dollar” client trust accounts — the bank accounts attorneys use to hold clients’ money — as well as installing automated tools to help identify “patterns of behavior that could signal possible misconduct.”

“We must use lessons learned to strengthen the State Bar’s rules, policies and procedures to avoid replicating problems of the past,” said the board’s chair, San Francisco attorney Sean SeLegue.

The bar is trying to disbar Girardi, formally accusing him of misappropriating millions in client funds, dishonesty and other unprofessional conduct. He was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease this year, and his brother, who acts as his legal guardian, has told the bar through a lawyer that Girardi will not practice law again and does not plan to contest the proceedings.