[adolph]

Apparently the State Bar has been breaking the law.

The State Bar announced today that it is taking urgent action to address a breach of confidential attorney discipline case data that it discovered on February 24. A public website that aggregates nationwide court case records was able to access and display limited case profile data on about 260,000 nonpublic State Bar attorney discipline case records, along with about 60,000 public State Bar Court case records. The site also appears to display confidential court records from other jurisdictions.

Under California Business and Professions Code 6086.1(b), all disciplinary investigations are confidential until the time that formal charges are filed, and all investigations are confidential until a formal proceeding is instituted.

The nonpublic case profile data from the State Bar appears to have been displayed on this public website in violation of this statute. It includes case number, file date, case type, case status, and respondent and complaining witness names. It does not include full case records. We do not yet know how many attorney or witness names were disclosed.

[akira2501]

Is displaying those records in public the violation of the statute? Or was it merely allowing the documents out of their control? Such that.. now they're out, does the website actually have any obligation to follow the "Business and Professions Code?"