would you mind stepping to the po although this is a gorgeous science smallish courtroom for the chords in this building the acoustics are not great and we are recording the proceedings today so it would be helpful for me to hear you as well as for the recording equipment for you to use the microphone in today's proceeding and i did want to make sure you are aware that you're entitled to be represented by counsel at this scene do you understand that yes you are and you choose to represent yourself i have no choice in the course of the proceedings today i may ask questions of you and so i would like at this time to have you sworn in so that we can create a record and i'm going to have my courtroom deputy administer the  right so i want to make sure that you understand we all understand the scope of what we're doing here today the nature of the of the her supreme court proceedings what we are addressing today is the sole of your status to practice at the ninth circuit we're not reviewing any decision that has been made by any other jurisdiction so nothing that occurs in this proceeding could directly affect your ability to practice in california or in any other court so in the ninth circuit you understand that and i also want to make sure you the state procedure did not provide you with adequate notice and an opportunity to be heard i do process notion second that the proof of facts underlying the some other great reason exists to prevent the court from recognizing the state courts determination sort of a catch all phrase so that's the that's the scope of any points that you think you can you wish to make at this stage within reason i'm going to have some questions of you as well so let me thought this would be pretty much in the nature oral argument and that's the way i prepared and that typically is the case so do you have a sense of how much time you are going to require your honor i'm nothing if not efficient and i don't think i would need more than thirty minutes and of course if the court has questions which i certainly welcome i get my go a little bit longer than that all right well maybe i will just let you proceed the hearing i have not been so fortunate before other courts i am here due to the order of the california supreme court which signed off on an erroneous decision of the review department of the california state bar suspending my license the state bar courts are not constitutional court standard california constitution they are creatures of the state bar an administrative agency my petition for judicial review was denied by the california supreme court on july sixteenth two thousand and fourteen in one sentence the petition for deemed a judicial determination on the merits because it becomes an order of the california supreme court it's really well if i'm correct this argument is also can write ok so from my perspective about that argument my sense is that the three judge panel that's going to hear the merits of that issue is going to take precedence over anything i do so i don't think i'm going to rule on that particular point until the court resolves or appeal you understand my suspect that to be the case around or however my nine sixteen argument is so intertwined with my argument for lack of due process right has without a valid order from the california supreme court providing me with judicial review my license would not be suspended because it's only by virtue of the order from the california supreme court that my license was suspended my argument is i have not received judicial review and california rule of court nine point six steen is unconstitutional and if it is found unconstitutional my license is not suspend yet i'm caught in what i call a cure craddick box because i raise those issues before the california supreme court but the california supreme court does not take attorney appeals from the review department and as i argued in my petition for certiorari attorneys are the only licensed professionals in this state who are treated that way every other licensed professional in this state has the right to go into california state court and challenge any adverse agency action against their license astonishing attorneys in the state are the only ones who do not have that right they are subjected to agency level i was subjected to the decision of three review department judges i would just like to reiterate that the state of our court is not a large court there are five hearing department judges and three review department judges all attorney appeals seem to stop at three review aren't judges you have three people deciding the fate of almost two hundred fifty thousand members of the california state  judicial review i also question as i did in my petition for certiorari the appointments process to the state bar court only two of the judges are actually appointed  and she was appointed by state sen john burton in the year two thousand when she had been an active member of the state bar for a little over five years the minimum requirement is five years as an active member of the state bar she had only been out of law school eight years john burton had state law changed so that as head of the senate rules committee he could appoint her to the court in two thousand her judicial profile and her state bar profile show that she had minimal or no litigation or private practice experience yet she was called upon and good to pass on my license and the license of many others in the state in the absence of meaningful he just short review putting a judge in the front of someone's name does not make them infallible and here the california supreme court has conveniently looked the other way and allowed decisions concerning a valuable property right someone's license to practice law to a late it not only the first amendment and fourteenth amendment it's also violated california law it has violated the procedural protections granted fourteen of california constitution that all causes coming before the california supreme court should provide a reasoned written decision after oral argument the california supreme court in adopting nine point sixteen has completely ignored the procedural protections granted to me as an attorney in this state now as the california supreme court just unaware of these constitutional violations i think not justices can heard and brown into very spirited dissent in the on rose case brought that directly to their colleagues attention and justice brown particularly was astonished and i have to say disgusted by the court ruling in that case she called the seizure efficient but not pretty and that it seems like anything anything will pass constitutional muster have challenged it in the related cases that this court has referred to i will challenge in every way i can think possible my career is virtually over but thus far to my knowledge my research hasn't shown it no one has had the will the courage or the resources to challenge this rule on constitutional grounds and i will continue to challenge it with every breath in my body in penny in my pocket and i don't have very many pennies left in my pocket but i will do whatever i can to preserve the constitutional rights of the attorneys in this state because what we have here is an administrative agency with no accountability my first attorney when i had the money to retain counsel was scott drexel who was a former chief trial counsel of the california state bar and mr drexel said to me he said to because what you have here is an agency who defers to the state bar in my case that judge  member of the review department when i had my oral hearing before the review department three times she referred to enhanced and enhanced fee wasn't even issue in my case the review department has become so jaded and fixated that anyone involved with the law modification process is evil or corrupt that  fair impartial determination was on was impossible the review department has taken that position because that is the state bar now that hardly means that the review department is comprised of impartial decision makers it is a biased administrative agency that is why she just full review meaningful judicial review is so important department that section should have been analyzed under strict scrutiny because important fundamental rights and in the first amendment were involved the review department disposed of by constitutional arguments in one paragraph based on rational basis they failed to apply the correct constitutional analysis i made a challenge based on they'd ness and over breath completely ignored no mention of it even in the opinion the review department engaged in faulty statutory construction in fact the authors of the california practice guide unprofessional conduct boundary view department statutory construction civil code twenty nine forty four point seven erroneous it was so blatantly wrong that the authors felt compelled to comment on it in the practice guide they boldly stated the review department got it wrong  and i use that just as an example because it has a bearing on my case but it also shows what happens when the review department gets it wrong i know mr taylor i know for a fact because i checked on his case he court as idea and of course the u s supreme court receives something like five thousand petitions for writ every year and they accept one hundred well i was hardly surprised that my petition for writ of says sherry was denied but i had to try i had to give it a shot because if i didn't for sure the answer was you know so attorneys in th as an attorney has there is really no recourse is that due process is that in accord with business in professions code sixty eighty seven is that in accord with article six section fourteen of the california constitution is that in accord with my right to petition under the first amendment and the due process clause of the fourteenth amendment the convenience of the california supreme court is hardly a compelling state interest in justifying the denial of attorneys due process right no accountability or review by another body state bar courts can do pretty much whatever they want without comment or correction because there is no accountability the state bar courts boast of their system of independent professional judges on their official website as i said there are eight of them by the review three review department judges and five hearing department judges but what i think  that the state bar courts engage in assembly line adjudication of claim they can get away with it because there's no accountability the california system has been around for the last twenty five years yet no other state has followed california's lead and there's a good reason for it  r interrupting but i'm the thought i keeps occurring to me about whether the issues that you raise and now are ones that i can rule on or at least rule on now while your other cases pending so i'm wondering if i could just take a moment to clarify the scope of the appeal in your other case pending in the ninth circuit or the one concerning the administrative proceeding in the arbitra me just so that we i understand where you're at now in your argument you've been you've been making a number of arguments about the problems of the california disciplinary system in terms of the process the organization all of that so let me backtrack a little bit about this about your case and how it came about clients are not always truthful with their attorney a lot of these people are putting their loans and stated income with out any back up as far as the wherewithal to repay their loans and they were playing fast and loose with the system and they thought they could play fast and loose with the loan modification process as well that is one type of client who filed a complaint against me because i didn't conduct forensic audits of my clients i believed them when they told me a certain set of facts and i proceeded on that basis well the lenders have they've wised up so they do checks now to make sure if what the borrower says is true  sell they would often get rejected because of that not to my fault but through their misrepresenting their financial situation ok i did the work  through the client's own actions they were denied a loan modification that's one type of client another type of client was the client who we worked we worked we worked and this is a very very in labor intensive process because back in two thousand and eight two thousand one thousand and ten lenders were extremely disorganized anti it was horrendous and they just had warm bodies to take the costs and files were getting lost documents were getting lost you'd have to send things in time and time again because they weren't properly staffed so you had people who after a year or two decided to throw in the towel and then they'd want their money back well i don't know how this work you can't get people back their money when you've done office work that's the second type of client and then you had people who would interfere with the process the game lenders like to pay out play it's dividing conquer they were offering call clients to try to get some information out of them and try to create a discrepancy as a basis for denying a loan modification after working in the process for a while you get on to the lenders ways on how they tried to  some people would call up the lender and they'd either get confused or they give the lender information they really shouldn't and they kind of tubed their own i call it interfering with the process they kind of to get their own l modification so there were several examples types of clients yeah yeah when the six from other states actual noticed there were no performance allegations made against me because unlike other people associated with on our vacations i did not take people's money this came out first of all i've been in practice for thirty years and i never had a complaint filed against me so i don't do things see that i researched the statute very carefully and when it talks about compensation i do not consider putting client funds in your trust account compensation it's not considered compensation until you drop down on it and apply it to your thesis if it had been compensation and i need this argument if all the funds that attorneys had in a trust account was considered compensation wouldn't you have to declare that on your tax returns it defies the very purpose of the trust but it wasn't  withdraw money from the trust fund before all services were performed ok this goes back to what the practice guides sad i june money down discreet aspects of work were performed in accordance with my retainer agreement ok so has that accord with the statute because with respect to realtors there's a specific provision that says that they cannot i can't think the terminology they used they do is you sign a retainer agreement for the attorney to prepare the bankruptcy schedules and appear at the three forty money then if you want that attorney to appear on your behalf in any adversary actions  there's no provision in the bag of say lot like twenty nine forty four point seven that says you can't receive any compensation until after the person has fully performed each and every service the person contracted to perform yes and if you have distinct contracts if you have just create segments of work and you complete section that the authors of the practice guide said that the review department got it wrong because in business and professions code one zero zero two  any compensation until after the person has fully performed each and every service the person contracted to perform or represented that he or she would perform s generally so what step did you consult with anyone or seek advice from the bar or anything about whether this whether you are a retainer agreement conform  the story part until two thousand and twelve compound that procedure and in fact jane can close to a lot of cases because of that before the central district of california which i think i can pull out i i don't have it are the top of my head but i have it here with me whether that state by actually reversed position i had conversations with the state bar about that because i thought they were a stopped from changing position i also used it in my argument that the statute with void for vagueness because the state bar itself had taken inconsistent positions with respect to that very place there so i know taylor know the position they took in taylor but now you're telling me that there was  hearing submission in which i would ask you to explain to me this point and i think this is a very important point for you to  specifically identify the ruling of the state bar on which you rely that authorized you to offer unbundle services ok i don't want is whether you reasonably relied on some i did not see this i looked through this material this is the first time that i am aware of your contention now that you relied on some legal authority and constructing your loan modification agreement that provided you with cover because certainly that's not in  and i did not raise that before the ninth circuit again i wasn't quite sure how deep into this ninth circuit wanted well that without really arguing everything i did before the california now if if you were if you could establish by clear convincing evidence that there was no thought in that you relied on that allowed you in good faith to proceed as you did and that along came thousand and twelve as it so happened they extended it but i knew that it took so long to get a loan modification that i was winding my practice down after march two thousand and eleven so i wasn't taking and it's clear from the statute that's kind of the way it reads now you're telling me that there was other authority in which reasonable relied before that guided your decision to structure your loan  trainer agreement as you did and that you believed in title v to make withdrawals from the trust account as you complete each aspect of your representation yes you understand what i'm saying yes and then you have to i'm going to give you time to file supplemental filing to me t you understand what i'm getting at here absolutely your honor and i appreciate that very much yeah ok i'll be interested to see what you have to say where i interrupted you if you want to add some more but let me throw out a few blanks let me just for my own benefit get a little bit of of your biographical background firm in the morning it was the largest firm in the state at the time i'm not sure that's still the current name of the firm right and what kind of practice was that i was a commercialized  two or three years i mean we're going back now twenty five thirty years  and then i moved i was living on the west side of the world to the valley and i wanted to be closer to where i left because l a i mean coming from iowa the l a traffic was just overwhelming to me so i i worked for a firm in the valley for three years and i was trying to start a bankruptcy practice there but that didn't quite pan out so then i i i moved to two thousand two thousand two thousand and three and i'm a single woman so it's like no children so at that point i thought  influenced my thinking to wasn't just professional i was kind of socially and so i moved to san diego and i missed last angelus so much i was coming back every six weeks and that kind of convinced me i was really i had turned the corner and was really that was two thousand and six and then yeah and then i started with a shepherd mullen in two thousand and seven mellon represented a lot of lenders and i thought that was just great but then the recession happened and i did not have stable clients i was a high priced worker bee and law firms i never saw paper law firms major law firms were doing fifteen percent pay cuts and a lot of people were laid off and i got laid off in june two thousand and nine speakers there was no work practices the internal structure of lenders because actually my supervisor interning at shepherd mellon had been loaned out to bank of america for one year to work internally at bank of america so i work directly under him so i was really savvy as to how the in the internal practices of lenders worked and one thing that the review department in the state bar court i don't know either intentionally or unintentionally don't seem to get is the loan modification process did not affect the mortgage i mean it it affected the mortgage but he did not have to know state law it was the loan was being modified and the hamp involved uniform national lending standards it did not involve the underlying mortgage because as i tried to argue to damn it you were affecting them or he each you would have had fifty different standards rules governing different state law it was uniform application the same guidelines that applied to somebody in massachusetts would apply to a borrower in california i therefore thought i think it neatly within the most take jurisdictional practice rules which the review department disagreed with and the review department misconstrued the not interested snow practice rules totally ignored the official comments that support my position and the official comments were adopted by the states the states had the the option of either adopting an official comments are not and yet although i argued that to the state our court completely ignored the official comments which i consider the most yes so how is it that thirty if you actually did what you were contracted to do how is it that thirty of your clients filed complaints not want her to or three or even five or six thirty how how do you explain what happened people are desperate and they want their money back you didn't get me a lo thinking give me my money back are these all instances where you did not achieve the loan modification yes most of them i would say with two or three exceptions i could not achieve  you read the statute that twenty nine for the force point seven which says no money shall be u more on bundle the statute and if you just did step one and two were just step one you would be entitled to some of the agreement money even if you were unable to fully achieve  the client then she'll from finishing the assignment and you have done all of the work that you possibly can i think you have earned your feet the thing is i didn't i didn't charge by the hour because these people could not have afforded and hourly fee i charged a flat fee and i completed the work i said ok for this part of the service vacation and hamp and this gentleman had several investment properties which we later discovered ok so we had a real problem with that and then he wanted his money back and i said i could not give him all his money back because i had done all the work and there is a carve out in my retainer agreement that you represent that what you tell me and correct because i'm proceeding on that basis and he did not i just kind of in a lie and of course one thing led to another and then tempers flared and then he wanted his and of course under the guidelines he didn't really have much recourse he had to find against me because the state bar had taken a certain position i should have appealed it to the superior court but at that time i was trying to wind down my business and i put my client's interests ahead of mine i just did not get around to it and  i lost money on every file i had bills to pay this isn't like money goes in my pocket i let you know ok and that's ok but asserting that i'm just i'm trying to understand the facts so  this is the judgment under the business and professions code that that says the state bar can help a client collect his and there is a presiding arbitrator was different then the decision maker arbitrator he's an official with the state bar and and in turn this time i was trying to work out something with walter clarke to try and pay him some money i did not have a whole lot of extra money at that point i was trying to wind down my business get back on my feet and i've done the best i could but he was adamant in his position that he wanted all the money at once and i said walter in my eyes will be five million dollars i don't have five thousand dollars i'm just doing the best i can i'm trying to get back on my feet he didn't care now under the business and professions code it's either it's up to the presiding arbitrator or the client they can agree to a payment plan now but that the presiding stamps i was on government sponsored health care because on top of everything else i have flown down a set of cement steps at the los angeles courthouse and broken my he how hard it is to break you here so i was i was disabled i submitted uncontroverted evidence nothing that was challenge by the same judge and because the business and professions code says shall not be enforced if the attorney said in its evidence that she's unable bar require you to identify all of the clients with whom you had a loan modification retainer agreement so but you didn't have how many clients testified in your on your behalf for for and were any of them subject to contracts that were entered into after twenty nine forty four point seven took effect all of them were complain so the only restitution that you've been ordered to pay was for those witnesses who file complaints against you and for whom you were unsuccessful in getting a loan modifications you have a right yes well not all of the thirty but i unsuccessful for i mean i'd have to go back and check out i mean i think that you were three i did get a loan modification they still file complaints against me because if they knew there was money to be had and they knew about this statute because believe me the state bar plastered all over its website and basically invited people to file complaints against people providing on modification clients in your error that paragraph that talks about that you are that the it would be governed by california law that you're providing legal services based on for services based on federal law you know what i'm agreed that i think within the safe harbor and that it would probably be a good idea from then on out to change my we can agree more which is what i did and the state bar did not proceed based on that complaint or in my initial trial in november two thousand and twelve i was represented by counsel he had a car and i can tell you i under the assumption that you had succeeded in getting her qualifications for those four folks but you weren't so that then the answer to my question is have it now or goes to people yeah i did two of them ok let's talk about zero where i suppose you could say they received everything they bargained for in terms of the services that they contracted for you know they're the bar is a very broad brush very broad brush and i'm glad you brought this up because one of the four california clients was named christopher memor the statute that says that twenty nine forty four point seven only applies when the retainer if paid by the compensation is paid quote by the b uses that language by the bar in mr memory lease case the retainer and there's no dispute about this in the record the retainer was paid by a third party so i argued ok state bar you want to take that literal interpretation of twenty nine forty four point seven then you should be bound by by the b miles ruled against me i raise that point to the review department very weak argument which you know i certainly attacked on appeal but there was not even any mention of it in the review department's decision right i guess my last questions have a practical question as i mentioned at the practicing in the ninth circuit i know would be nice to get some sort of favorable ruling for you but i'm just wondering whether it's a practical matter you have any i don't know what the future holds and i'm sixty one almost sixty one and with sixty one in june i certainly never thought that this would happen to me within the last five years either as a practical matter yes i'm mean how often did i appear in front of the ninth circuit it's not like most attorneys have to have a thriving ninth circuit practice i never did hear all of the how many times have you  i don't think either period in oral argument ever i think i filed briefs maybe three times in the ninth circuit ok well i don't have any other questions for you and  i know i didn't interrupt your your argument earlier on the various issues concerning the problems that you perceive with the california disciplinary process i think i am familiar with those i don't think i need i need you to do that for my benefit and as i mentioned earlier i mean i think i'm going to be forced to to defer to the changing but is there anything else that you wish to add before we conclude the second you know your honor you've been very patient and i think your questions had an excellent and part of the reason i wanted to appear in front of this court because i wanted to learn the weaknesses in my case because i i have tried to do the right thing believe it or not all along and i'm shocked that i'm in this position that is why i feel so strongly about california rule of court nine point six two because i don't think i would be in this position if i had had an actual court to court review this if things that happened to me i never thought could happen but i'm i'm grateful for the opportunity to further brief the court's questions and how much time would you monday in while you're at it when the question i asked you referred to your reliance on the governing california state interpretation of twenty nine forty four point seven but the i guess the other aspect of this is the multi state issue so i would expand my request for you to address the legal basis