A Utah State Bar committee has recommended the bar more close-ly manage its office of attorney discipline and require more comprehensive reports from the office about its caseload.
Bar Counsel Stephen Trost resigned last month as head of the office of attorney discipline weeks before the committee presented a preliminary report to the Utah State Bar Commission.Trost's departure had nothing to do with the committee's audit of the office or the recommendations for change, said Utah State Bar President Paul Moxley.
"Steve did a great job, and it's time for the bar to move on," Mox-ley said.
Stephen Cochell, a former associate of Paul Moxley, will replace Trost. He starts in July, said John Baldwin, director of the bar.
The bar commission put together a committee last summer to review the office. "It was the bar commission's concern that there be more day-to-day supervision of the bar counsel's office," Moxley said.
Recent changes in the way attorneys are disciplined now allows that kind of supervision. Previously, the bar commission heard complaints against attorneys and recommended discipline to the Utah Supreme Court. To avoid a conflict of interest, the commission kept an arms-length relationship with the bar counsel.
In 1993, the bar began filing complaints against attorneys in state courts. State judges now hear the matter and recommend discipline, which is still imposed by the Utah Supreme Court.
The change allows the bar commission to manage attorney discipline more closely, explained Bar Commissioner Charlotte Miller.
Miller made a preliminary report of her committee's recommendations at the bar commission meeting in May. She will submit a final, written report to the bar at its annual meeting in San Diego next month.
"I think the biggest goal would be for the commission to receive more general information about where cases are, and the kind of cases that are filed," she said. For example, Miller's committee tried to find out if more complaints are filed against new attorneys or attorneys who have been practicing for several years.
"I haven't been able to receive anything like that," she said.
More information about the kinds of complaints filed against attorneys and which groups seem most vulnerable to complaints would help the commission provide preventative training to the state's attorneys, she said.
"Our report will focus on the information we should be receiving in the future."
The commission also needs to more tightly manage the office because the office's budget has skyrocketed, Moxley said. "The cost of running that office has gone up almost 50 percent in the last five years because there have been so many more complaints. It's a bigger office, a bigger part of our budget and it needed more supervision."
Cochell is currently an associate with Campbell, Maack and Sessions. Prior to that, he spent two years at the former law firm of Hansen, Jones & Leta. While living in Michigan, he worked for two years as an assistant U.S. attorney then spent five years with the Wise and Marsac law firm. He obtained a master's degree in social work from the University of Maryland and a law degree from the University of Baltimore School of Law.