United States District Court - Northern District Court of California

James Ware, Chief Judge

Richard W. Wieking, Clerk of Court

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Notice of Proposed Revisions to Criminal Local Rule 32-5 and Civil Local Rule 11

PLEASE TAKE NOTICE that the Court is considering changes to Criminal Local Rule 32-5 and Civil Local Rule 11. Comments regarding any of the proposed changes may be submitted by emailing evidence@cand.uscourts.gov within thirty days of the date of this notice. 

Criminal Local Rule 32-5:

In order to provide counsel with more time to prepare for sentencing hearings, the Court is considering changing the filing deadlines in Criminal Local Rule 32-5 to seven days before the sentencing hearing for sentencing memoranda and three days for the sentencing hearing for responses to sentencing memoranda.

View the proposed changes to Criminal Local Rule 32-5.

Civil Local Rule 11:

The proposed revision represents a substantial update of this rule, most of which has not been revised since December 2000. The proposed amendments are designed to modify the existing rule in the following ways:

  1. --   The requirement that applicants for the bar of our court provide a certificate of good standing from the State Bar of California (“State Bar”), made obsolete by the availability of more-current attorney status records online, would be eliminated for the convenience of applicants and Clerk’s Office staff and to reduce paperwork;
  2. --   References to the Bankruptcy Court are added to acknowledge expressly that the District and Bankruptcy courts share a common bar and that the Bankruptcy Court incorporates the District Court’s attorney admission and discipline rules by reference;
  3. --   The discipline rules are reorganized to reflect more clearly that there are two separate, parallel discipline processes in our court:
    1. 1.  discipline arising from attorney practice in our court; and
    2. 2.  reciprocal discipline based on the notifications we receive from the State Bar regarding changes in the status of its members;
  4. --   A structural anomaly of the rule is corrected to eliminate ambiguity and to clarify that the primary mission and purpose of the Standing Committee is discipline cases arising in our court, not reciprocal discipline cases;
  5. --   Reciprocal discipline cases involving voluntary, temporary or administrative changes in an attorney’s bar status and/or discipline short of suspension from practice such as probation are managed by the Clerk's Office in a way that reduces unnecessary paperwork and staff time;
  6. --   The most serious reciprocal discipline cases are promptly identified and directed to the attention of the chief judge;
  7. --   Interim discipline in the form of suspension is automatically imposed in cases in which an order to show cause (OSC) is issued;
  8. --   The respondent attorney’s burden in responding to an OSC in a reciprocal discipline case is defined, consistent with the controlling legal principles;
  9. --   Attorneys for the United States and attorneys admitted pro hac vice are included in the provisions relating to attorney discipline;
  10. --   The Discipline Oversight Committee prescribed by the existing rule is replaced by a single Discipline Oversight Liaison Judge;
  11. --   The processes applicable to cases referred to the Standing Committee are more fully spelled out for the benefit of judges, Clerk’s Office staff and Standing Committee members—including case opening, under-seal status, document filing and case closing—so as to ensure consistent and timely handling and allow the Clerk to exercise improved oversight over them;
  12. --   The ADR Unit obtains a means of referring attorneys to the Standing Committee for unprofessional conduct in ADR proceedings;
  13. --   The description of Standing Committee members as “special masters” is changed to “special counsel”;
  14. --   The Court obtains discretion to increase the size of the Standing Committee as necessary to manage the Committee’s workload; also, reappointment of members is expressly authorized;
  15. --   Provisions relating to reimbursement of costs incurred by the Standing Committee are consolidated in one subsection and a time limit for seeking reimbursement is added;
  16. --   Provision is made for publication of orders imposing discipline in cases arising in our court; and
  17. --  Grammatical errors in Civil Local Rules 11-1 and 11-8 are corrected and minor stylistic changes are made throughout the rule to improve internal consistency within Rule 11 as well as consistency with the other Civil Local Rules. 

          Read or download the text of the revised Civil Local Rule 11.

Dated: February 22, 2012