Providing Access to Justice by Ensuring Oversight and Quality Control in California’s Appointed Appellate Counsel System.

The CDCR Inmate Locator now lists multiple housing facilities within certain prisons. To determine which specific facility your client is housed in, the most reliable approach is to call the CDCR Inmate Locator number (below) and provide the client’s CDCR number. They will give you the appropriate mailing address by P.O. Box. Each P.O. Box corresponds to a specific facility within the institution. However, CDCR does not disclose the facility letter or number directly, so that information must be inferred based on the assigned P.O. Box.

• CDCRs Identification Unit – (916) 445-6713, Monday through Friday (excluding holidays), between the hours of 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. PST

Upon renewal this year, the State Bar is asking members to report how much pro bono work and reduced rate work, they have done each year in a section called “Pro Bono Hours and Reduced Legal Services Reporting.”  This new reporting requirement results from legislation passed in 2024, seeking to encourage more attorneys to provide more voluntary pro bono legal services in civil cases.  (Bus. & Prof. Code, §§ 6073.1, 6073.2.)

CAP has confirmed that the drafters of the new legislation were not aware of the population of lawyers that do appointed criminal, dependency and mental health cases.  As a result, and unintentionally, these court-appointed attorneys are NOT EXEMPT from the “mandatory” reporting requirement.  Whether hours worked on appointed cases qualify as “reduced fee legal services” will likely depend on the nature of your practice.  This makes it somewhat challenging to figure out how to respond to the Bar’s questions on this topic.

CAP has also confirmed that while the legislation references mandatory reporting, at this time, there is actually no penalty for an attorney’s failure to complete any pro bono hours or failure to complete the annual report.  (Bus. & Prof. Code, 6073.2, sub. (g) [“Failure of a licensee of the State Bar to comply with any of the provisions of this section is not grounds for disciplinary or administrative recourse.”])

For work done as a panel attorney, CAP recommends the panel attorneys:

• Check box 1 – “I am subject to this reporting requirement and will report the amount of pro bono and reduced fee legal services hours preformed in the last year in question 2, below,” and then
• fill in “None” in both section 2a and 2b, or check the boxes saying “I decline to answer.”

Additional information can be found on the State Bar website:  Mandatory-Pro-Bono-Hours-Reporting-FAQ