California State Bar Admits They Committed ‘Serious Failures’ With Tom Girardi’s Alleged Crimes: Details

04.11.2022 - 21:19 / usmagazine.com

Tom Girardi’s legal woes continue to make headlines. The California State Bar emphasized the severity of the former attorney’s alleged crimes while acknowledging the mistakes made by not disbarring him sooner after he allegedly embezzled millions of dollars from clients over multiple decades.

In a lengthy, 50-page open letter from the State Bar of California, published on Thursday, November 3, the agency stated: “The handling of the Girardi matters brought to light serious failures in the State Bar’s attorney discipline system, failures that have contributed to a lack of confidence in the State Bar’s ability to carry out our core responsibility of protecting the public. There is no excuse being offered here; Girardi caused irreparable harm to hundreds of his clients, and the State Bar could have done more to protect the public. We can never allow something like this to happen again.”

Specifically, the letter noted, “Over the past 40 years, the State Bar opened 205 disciplinary matters about Girardi. Of the 205 matters, approximately 120 involved allegations relating to client trust account violations. The remaining disciplinary matters involved various allegations ranging from failure to communicate with clients to failure to perform, as well as misrepresentations to courts and clients, among others.”

Though the 83-year-old cofounder of law firm Girardi & Keese, who now has Alzheimer’s and has been under conservatorship since July 2021, made headlines for his widely-publicized legal troubles beginning in 2020 — during which he was accused of embezzling $2 million from plane crash victims he represented in 2018 — the L.A. Times reports that he had been accused of misappropriating funds, abandoning clients and more ethical