By Selena Sanchez
On September 27, 2024, Governor Gavin Newsom signed AB 2505 (Gabriel) (Chapter 719, Statutes of 2024), otherwise known as the Pro Bono Disclosure Bill. This bill furthers an attorney’s commitment to provide pro bono legal services annually and contribute to the California legal aid organizations. The bill requires active licensed attorneys to report whether they provided Pro Bono legal services each year beginning in 2026. Attorneys must report if they provide pro bono legal services through the My State Bar online profile on the State Bar’s website when payment of annual fees is due. (Business & Professions Code § 6073.2). However, attorneys who are employed in the following situations are exempt from the reporting requirement: (1) an organization who primarily engages in pro bono services, (2) the State of California, federal government, or political subdivision therein, and (3) employers that prohibit employees from performing pro bono services and declares so on their portal.
Under the bill, the State Bar will be responsible for retaining and maintaining these records for at least five years, and the reported information will be confidential and exempt from public records disclosure. However, the State Bar may publish reports based on the information provided to it so long as the information being disclosed is aggregated and anonymized. In other words, individual attorney totals will be kept confidential and exempt from disclosure. Additionally, the bill states that the State Bar will be prohibited from using funds for any costs associated with these provisions.
Notably, a licensee who fails to comply with the bill’s provisions will not be subject to disciplinary or administrative action on those grounds alone. Although the mandated disclosure requirement does not take effect until 2026, the State Bar recently stated that it will ask for voluntary disclosure of pro bono service totals in 2024 if the information is known in the 2025 fee billing cycle.
According to the author, Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel, the goal of the bill is “[e]ncourg[ing] attorneys to report their pro bono hours to the State Bar thereby helping legal service providers to better direct services to at-risk communities across the state.” The bill was ultimately passed with majority votes in the Senate (31-9) and Assembly (64-8-7) in early September.