NOBC - National Organization of Bar Counsel

History of the National Organization of Bar Counsel

The Early Years

The National Organization of Bar Counsel (NOBC) had its genesis in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s when lawyer discipline counsel from around the country began meeting with each other at American Bar Association meetings about matters of common concern, such as professional ethics and the unauthorized practice of law.

In August of 1964, four general counsel of state bar associations, Indiana, Illinois, Texas and California, met and decided to establish a vehicle through which bar counsel could regularly meet to share work experiences; exchange briefs, pleadings, and ideas; and facilitate reciprocal discipline. The first informal gathering of what was to become NOBC was a daylong meeting in New Orleans in February of 1965. Thirteen bar associations or disciplinary agencies were represented. J. Cameron Hall of Michigan was elected the first president of the fledgling organization. NOBC past-presidents include bar counsel from throughout the United States, from large and small jurisdictions. The 1968 meeting in Chicago expanded to a day and a half in length.

Formal Organization

NOBC formally organized as a non-profit corporation in the District of Columbia on March 11, 1977 and has remained a District of Columbia corporation in good standing ever since. In March of 1988, the Internal Revenue Service issued a determination letter that NOBC is exempt from federal income taxation under section 501(c)(6) of the Internal Revenue Code. The original corporate purposes of NOBC were and continue to be:

(i) The protection of the public and the courts against unethical conduct; (ii) the protection of attorneys against unfounded complaints; (iii) the exchange of information and views among counsel for national, state and local bars and bar associations; (iv) the exchange of pleadings and briefs filed in disciplinary cases, unauthorized practice of law cases and other litigation involving the organized bar; (v) joint, coordinated action, including lawsuits, when necessary, to promote solutions to nationwide problems relating to the legal profession; (vi) mutual assistance in gathering evidence and testimony at the request of fellow bar counsel; (vii) the exchange of legislative proposals, bills, statutes, court rules or other items of interest to bar counsel; (viii) the encouragement to other bars and bar associations to employ bar counsel where none are employed; and (ix) institutes and seminars to increase the knowledge and efficiency of bar counsel.

NOBC, as an organization, does not have any responsibility for lawyer discipline, which is administered in each jurisdiction by its member agencies.

NOBC is governed by a board of directors comprised of the organizational officers: the President, President-Elect, Treasurer, and Secretary, two directors-at-large, the NOBC delegate to the ABA House of Delegates, and the Immediate Past-President, all of whom are elected by the membership.

Information Sharing

In about 1977, the ABA Center for Professional Responsibility (ABA Center) began providing a binder of recent lawyer discipline cases. This was the forerunner of the Current Developments program, which has become institutionalized as a centerpiece of NOBC conferences. That program has progressed from a few pages in the conference materials to a lengthy and comprehensive document that is available to bar counsel in searchable digital format, making the most current decisions in lawyer discipline matters available to other discipline counsel throughout the country.

Conferences

Well into the 1980’s, the number of bar counsel in attendance at regular meetings could fit around a “U-shaped” table in a hotel conference room to hold conversations about topics of common interest. Today, multi-day meetings take place twice per year in hotel conference facilities, set up classroom style to accommodate as many as 150 attendees from throughout the United States and elsewhere in the world. Conferences are generally held in conjunction with the annual and mid-year meetings of the American Bar Association and have occurred at diverse locations throughout the United States and Canada.

Hospitality

Consistent with the informality of NOBC’s beginnings, in the early years “hospitality” consisted of little more than finding a restaurant where everyone in attendance could eat for a reasonable price. Under the guidance of deputy bar counsel from the District of Columbia, Gene Shipp, and New Mexico bar counsel, Ginny Ferrara, the size of the organization has resulted in more formalized receptions and social events of greater complexity.

ABA Center for Professional Responsibility

NOBC has an important relationship with the American Bar Association’s Center for Professional Responsibility(ABA Center). The ABA has traditionally taken a leadership role in promulgating model standards of conduct for lawyers practicing in the United States. These model standards have progressed from the Canons of Professional Ethics (1908) to the Code of Professional Responsibility (1969) to the Model Rules of Professional Conduct (1983) and recent Ethics 2000 amendments to the Model Rules (2002). After the ABA House of Delegates adopts model rules, individual jurisdictions review and ultimately decide the final form the rules will take in their jurisdictions. NOBC has provided critical input to the formulation of these model rules through its representative in the House of Delegates as well as through its interaction with the ABA Center. The ABA Center, in turn, assists individual jurisdictions by providing research materials and technical support.

The ABA Center has also taken the lead with two important lawyer regulation functions. The first is the National Lawyer Regulation Data Bank, which collects information about lawyer discipline for reporting to other jurisdictions so that lawyers admitted in more than one jurisdiction can be reciprocally disciplined by the other jurisdictions where they are admitted to practice. Another important project of the ABA Center is the creation and dissemination of its Survey on Lawyer Discipline. This annual survey collects important statistics on lawyer discipline from throughout the United States and presents it in readable reports.

NOBC further interacts with the ABA Center through participation by NOBC members on various Center committees and the designation by NOBC of liaisons to each Center committee.

Digital Presence

Growing out of the efforts of an NOBC committee around 1994, Tom McCormick, assistant bar counsel from New Jersey, was instrumental in the development of an organizational listserv, hosted by the American Bar Association since 2000. Since its inception in 1996, the listserv, which is open to active NOBC members, has become an increasingly vital and efficient method of sharing information within the NOBC membership.

NOBC established its presence on the world-wide web when it launched its first website in 1998 at www.NOBC.org. With the assistance of the NOBC Internet Connectivity Committee, implementation of the initial website was led by Mr. McCormick, who was also the pioneering web master. Josh Shipp, the then-teenaged son of the deputy bar counsel from the District of Columbia, made significant contributions to the web site design. In 2005, NOBC rolled out its latest version of the website, which provides comprehensive contact information for all NOBC membership organizations, answers to frequently asked questions about lawyer discipline, access to current case developments and rule-changes bearing on lawyer regulation, and archived discussion threads from the NOBC list-serves.

Administration

With the growth of NOBC and its leadership’s obligations to bar regulation activities in their home jurisdictions, NOBC appointed its first part-time administrator, Teresa Boyd, an administrative assistant in the District of Columbia bar counsel’s office, in 1996. Ms. Boyd acted in this capacity until she left bar counsel work in 2002. Since 2003, the Center for Association Resources in Schaumberg, Illinois has provided professional staffing services for NOBC.

National and International Leadership in Lawyer Regulation

NOBC has played, and continues to play, an important role in lawyer regulation, speaking uniquely from the perspective of lawyers who are actively engaged in the day-to-day regulation of the bar through the enforcement of legal ethics rules. NOBC representatives were actively engaged in all of the major ABA initiatives in the field of lawyer regulation, including the 1970 Clark Committee Report, which provoked major changes to formalize and professionalize lawyer regulation in the United States; the 1992 McKay Commission Report, which updated the Clark Report; the drafting committee of the original ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct; the Commission on Multi-Jurisdictional Practice; and most recently, the ABA Ethics 2000 Commission, which updated the Model Rules of Professional Conduct. NOBC has maintained a consistent position of leadership of professional regulation issues in the ABA House of Delegates through the efforts of its long-tenured representative in the House, John Berry, Executive Director of the State Bar of Michigan.

With membership of lawyer regulators from every state in the union and the District of Columbia, NOBC is unique as a national organization of agencies and lawyers professionally engaged in the enforcement of legal ethics rules. NOBC’s national leadership was further solidified when federal agencies with lawyer regulation responsibilities joined NOBC. Those agencies include: the Judge Advocate General’s Corps of the U.S. Army, the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Professional Responsibility, the Executive Office for Immigration Review’s Office of General Counsel, the Inspector General’s Office of the National Labor Relations Board, the Office of Enrollment and Discipline of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the Internal Revenue Service, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Department of Homeland Security.

NOBC became international in scope when in the late 1980s when the first lawyer regulation entity from outside the United States joined the organization. NOBC’s international membership now includes the Canadian Law Societies of Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Upper Canada (Ontario), the Nova Scotia Barrister’s Society, and the Office of the Legal Services Commissioner of New South Wales, Australia. NOBC’s on-going initiatives on the international lawyer regulation front include the active participation of its representative, William C. Smith, General Counsel of the Georgia Bar, in discussions about the application of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) to the delivery of legal services.

Leadership Recognition

In 2001, former NOBC president and NOBC’s long-standing delegate to the ABA House of Delegates, John Berry, former Director of Legal Division for the state bar of Florida, former Assistant Director for the state bar of Arizona, and now Executive Director of the State Bar of Michigan, was honored to be selected as the eighth annual recipient of the ABA Center for Professional Responsibility’s Michael Franck Award, honoring “individuals whose career commitments in areas such as legal ethics, disciplinary enforcement and lawyer professionalism demonstrate the best accomplishments of lawyers.”

NOBC recognizes leadership and distinguished service within the organization through its annual President’s Award, inaugurated in 2001, with the award being presented that year to John Howe of the Missouri Supreme Court Office of Disciplinary Counsel. Other recipients have included, Gene Shipp of the District of Columbia Office of Bar Counsel (2002), Bill Smith of the State Bar of Georgia (2003), Fran Bassios of the State Bar of California (2004), and Virginia Ferrara of the Disciplinary Board of the Supreme Court of Mexico (2005).

Monitoring Compensation for Bar Regulation Staff

Like many areas of legal practice, lawyer regulation requires an understanding of complex principles gained primarily through scholarship and experience. Attracting and retaining skilled attorneys in lawyer discipline agencies is an important administrative goal aided in large part by the knowledge gained from salary surveys conducted by NOBC. On a bi-annual basis, NOBC solicits staff salary information from its member organizations and compiles it for the use of its members, all in an effort to assist jurisdictions to keep compensation at a level commensurate with the importance of the responsibilities of professional bar regulators.

Relationship with the Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers

Legal representation is vital for any lawyer facing disciplinary action. The Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers (APRL) was created in 1990 to provide an organization similar to NOBC for lawyers who represent respondents in lawyer discipline or disability proceedings or are otherwise engaged in law practice or academic activities related to professional responsibility. For a number of years, NOBC and APRL have collaborated by holding their semi-annual meetings in the same locations and co-sponsoring, with the ABA Center, a joint program for members of both organizations focusing on a topic of common interest and a joint reception. These activities have provoked hours of informative and spirited debate.