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GAZETTE
APRIL 198I
The Board has overall responsibility to administer the
plan, to give final approval of Standards for Certification,
to administer examinations of applicants on a regular
basis and to certify and rectify specialists who qualify.
The Advisory Commissions advise the Board concerning
various matters pertaining to its field, suggest to the
Board tentative standards for Board consideration,
monitor the fitness of continuing legal education courses
for accreditation for certification purposes and supervise
the preparation and grading of examination questions.
Both the Board and the Advisory Commissions are active
with rejected applications where a hearing is requested
and facts are disputed by the applicant.
Prior to adoption of any standards for certification of
specialists, the Board decided as a matter of policy that
the standards should not be so stringent that only the rare
lawyer with an outstanding reputation who practices in a
metropolitan environment representing large and wealthy
clients can participate. Rather, most competent, experi-
enced lawyers sufficiently involved in the fields of law
should qualify.
From the inception of the work of the Special
Committee in 1966, it was intended that the public be the
primary beneficiary of the certification programme by
insuring that the programme provide a method to identify
the competent practitioner and to communicate this
identification. The programme was not and is not
intended as merely a guarantee of threshold competence
in a field, but neither is it intended as a means to insulate
from their peers a few well-placed lawyers or to serve as
the basis to increase legal fees.
Lawyers were first certified under the Pilot Programme
on 20th November 1973 under standards adopted for the
three fields which are quite diverse. Each requires a
minimum of five years practice of law. Practice of law is
defined as "full time legal work done primarily for
purposes of legal advice or representation". Each set of
standards requires special educational experience, both
prior to certification and following certification (in order
to qualify for recertification), but in varying amounts
dependent upon the nature of the field. Taxation law has
the heaviest requirement for special educational experi-
ence as it has often been said that the half life of knowl-
edge in the tax field is perhaps five years.
The standards for both Criminal Law and Taxation
Law provide for peer review, but the requirement under
the Criminal Law standards are much more stringent in
this regard. A Taxation Law applicant must merely
furnish the names and addresses of five other lawyers
familiar with his or her practice, not including current
partners or associates of the applicant, who can attest to
his or her reputation for involvement in the field of
Taxation Law. The applicant for Criminal Law certifi-
cation is subject to the following peer review, taken
directly from the standards.
"An applicant shall submit the names and
addresses of persons to be contacted as references
to attest to the applicant's proficiency in the
practice of criminal law. Except as hereinafter
provided, the applicant shall not submit as a
reference the name of an applicant for whom he or
she has acted as a reference. Four (4) shall be
lawyers, chosen by the applicant, who practise in
the same areas as the applicant; one (1) shall be a
judge of any court of record in California, or any
federal court, chosen by the applicant, before whom
the applicant has appeared as an advocate in crim-
inal proceedings within the two (2) years immedi-
ately preceding application; three (3) shall be Cali-
fornia lawyers with whom applicant has tried a
criminal case, but with whom applicant is not
associated. In appropriate instances of limited prac-
tice the Criminal Law Advisory Commission, upon
prior motion, may permit the applicant to submit as
a reference the name of an attorney for whom he or
she has acted as a reference.
"The Criminal Law Advisory Commission shall
select four (4) lawyers or judges who practice or
preside in the same area as the applicant for further
evaluation of the applicant's proficiency in the
practice of criminal law."
Workers' Compensation Law has no requirement of
peer review.
It is in the area of substantial involvement in the
speciality field that the standards diverge the most. Both
Criminal Law and Workers' Compensation Law are
primarily quantitative as to this standard, while Taxation
Law relies more on a qualitative approach. Because of the
more limited nature of its field, Workers' Compensation
Law requires only one-fourth of the applicant's time be
spent in the field in each of three of the five years immedi-
ately preceding application, but it does require that the
applicant make at least 300 appearances by personal
attendance before a forum in California dealing with
Workers' Compensation matters within the same five-
year period. The Criminal Law standards require one-
third of the applicant's time during each of three years of
similar five-year period to be devoted to the field and
requires participation in a rather complex series of felony
jury trials, other trials, special criminal proceedings,
extraordinary writ proceedings and appellate proceedings
in order to qualify. The standards for Taxation Law
require that, in a similar period, "more than one-half of
the applicant's practice be devoted to matters in which
issues of tax law are significant factors". The applicant is
then required to show that he has had "substantial and
direct participation in such tax issues by giving infor-
mation concerning the frequency of the work and the
nature of the issues involved".
The examinations evolved by all of the Advisory
Commissions seek to allow the applicant to demonstrate
his familiarity with the more recent issues and trends
which have appeared in the field, the approaches to many
of which are not yet resolved by the leading practitioners
or the trial forums, and which constitute matters currently
creating problems for the experienced and involved practi-
tioner. Contrary to the Bar Examination administered to
law school graduates shortly after matriculation for the
purpose of admission to practice, which examination tests
the student's knowledge of statutory law and rules under
stare decisis
pertaining to the pertinent subject matter as
well as his approach to issue recognition and legal
reasoning, the specialists' examination tests whether or
not this experienced lawyer is living on the "cutting edge"
of the law in his field.
Since standards were adopted in the original three
fields of the Pilot Programme, additional standards have
been promulgated in the fields of Family Law, Labour
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