Vice Chief Justice John R. Lopez IV
Chair, Attorney Regulation Advisory Committee
Arizona Supreme Court
1501 W. Washington Street
Phoenix, AZ 85007
Telephone: 602-452-3378
E-mail: [email protected]

Letter from Past State Bar of Arizona Presidents Opposing Petition

Don Bivens
Don Bivens, PLLC
Bar No. 005134
15169 N. Scottsdale Rd., Suite 205
Scottsdale, AZ 85254
602-762-2661
[email protected]

Gabriela Monico
Assistant Attorney General – Special Litigation Section
State Bar Number: 039652
Submitting comment on behalf of the Arizona Attorney General's Office
2005 N. Central Ave.
Phoenix, AZ 85004
[email protected]
602-542-5025

Ted A. Schmidt
SB #005030
1790 E River Road, Suite 300
Tucson, Arizona 85718
520.545.1670
[email protected]

Kevin S Ruegg, CEO
Arizona Foundation for Legal Services & Education
4201 North St, Ste 210
602-340-7356
FAX – N/A
[email protected]
Bar # - N/A

Comment opposing R-25-0001 on behalf of:

Samuel A. Thumma
Chair, Arizona Commission on Access to Justice
Judge, Arizona Court of Appeals
Division One
State Courts Building
1501 West Washington Street
Phoenix, AZ 85007-3329
Telephone: (602) 452-6700

The State bar is cronyism plain and simple. Rachel Mitchell ordered the SBA to disbar me without consent, default, or a hearing on the merits, and the state bar duly complied. They did it because as a public defender I was simply trying to give my client, Jamaal Pennington, due process. Mitchell ordered the SBA to disbar me permanently because I had criticized her publicly. That are her exact words and Craig Hendley is following her order to the letter. Montgomery knows all about it. In fact, Darth Montgomery is the core of the rot. Diane Post knows all about it. Anthony Kern knows all about it. The state bar and Supreme Court both know full well Judge Chuck Whitehead is at strip clubs all day, like Bourbon Street, instead of working but they let him get away with it bc that is how cronyism works.

Defang the state bar. It's time Arizona joined the civilized world.

see for yourself. It's all out in the open video by DirectD https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlIwr3o0Lik

newspaper articles by Rachel Alexander, Stephen Lemons, and Jimmy Jenkins here https://x.com/toxikVlad/s.../1898472313210941459

Feel free to contact me if you want details. 4802274477 or [email protected]

Megan Carrasco
Chair, Council on Minorities and Women in the Law
1 E Washington Street
Suite 2700
Phoenix, Arizona 85004
Phone: (602) 382-6092
[email protected]
Bar# 037109

Adriana Genco, President
Los Abogados Hispanic Bar Association
Arizona State Bar # 033397
P.O. Box 813
Phoenix, AZ 85004
[email protected]
480-256-8182

From:
Arizona Asian American Bar Association
Arizona Black Bar
Arizona Minority Bar Association
Arizona Women Lawyers Association
Los Abogados Hispanic Bar Association

To the Arizona Supreme Court:

The bar associations listed above jointly write to oppose the Rule 32 petition filed by Warren Petersen and Ben Toma, which seeks to eliminate the State Bar of Arizona’s ability to fund non-regulatory activities.
These partner bars seek to advance diversity, equality, and justice in the Arizona legal community and to create meaningful professional development opportunities for our respective members . The State Bar of Arizona provides essential support to these numerous partner bars by enabling attorneys from all different backgrounds to network and collaborate.
The proposed rule change would eliminate the State Bar’s ability to ability to carry out its mission as mandated by the Arizona Supreme Court. If the petition is approved, it would eliminate the State Bar’s role in organizing and promoting activities that fulfill the Bar’s responsibilities to the legal profession and the public. It would undermine programs that help legal professionals in their practice, which in turn protect the public by ensuring the Bar’s members are equipped to carry out their duties as lawyers in an ethical manner. And most importantly, it would eliminate the Bar’s role in promoting access to justice for Arizonans, a cause that the Arizona Supreme Court has worked to address over the last few years.
The State Bar also provides other tremendous benefits to Arizonans. The State Bar improves access to competent and ethical legal professionals by hosting free legal service events for Arizonans who cannot afford a lawyer. The Bar also provides resources and assistance to partner bar organizations, supports diversity initiatives, and develops continuing education programs all of which serve to improve the legal profession and the Arizona community as a whole. The State Bar of Arizona’s Bar Leadership Institute has also been instrumental over the last eighteen years by successfully providing leadership and skills training to Arizona lawyers. Multiple BLI graduates have gone on to hold various influential leadership roles within the Arizona legal community.

The State Bar’s mission is to protect the public by improving the competency, ethics, and professionalism of lawyers practicing in Arizona. This petition will compromise that mission. The State Bar of Arizona provides significant value to our community beyond discipline. This petition does nothing to enhance the Arizona legal profession and would only harm Arizona’s lawyers and the Arizona public.
For the foregoing reasons, we respectfully request that the Court deny the petition.

Christopher Heo, Ex-Officio
Arizona Asian American Bar Association
P. O. Box 3496
Phoenix, AZ 85003

Sam Brown, President
Arizona Black Bar
P.O. Box 628
Phoenix AZ, 85001

Matt Scarber, President
Arizona Minority Bar Association
[email protected]

Lauren R.G. Talkington, President
Arizona Women Lawyers Association
PO Box 676
Gilbert, AZ 85299

Adriana Genco, President
Los Abogados Hispanic Bar Association
P.O. Box 813
Phoenix, AZ 85001

Comment of the State Bar of Arizona

Lisa M. Panahi
Bar No. 023421
State Bar of Arizona
4201 N. 24th Street, Suite 100
Phoenix, AZ 85016-6288
(602) 340-7236
[email protected]
[email protected]

Elena Nethers
State Bar No: 027136
Arizona Lawyers for Equal Justice
3511 E Claremont Ave
Paradise Valley AZ 85253
(602) 576-5793
[email protected]

Pursuant to Rule 28 of the Rules of the Supreme Court, Community Legal Services (“CLS”), DNA People’s Legal Services (“DNA”), Southern Arizona Legal Aid (“SALA”), and the William E. Morris Institute for Justice (“MIJ”) submit the attached comments in opposition to the Petition to Amend Rules 32(a)-(m), Ariz. R. Sup. Ct.

Respectfully submitted this 1st day of May 2025.

ANDREW P. SCHAFFER, AZ Bar. No. 037352
BRENDA MUÑOZ FURNISH, AZ Bar. No. 027280
MICHELLE J. SIMPSON, AZ Bar. No. 020199
WILLIAM E. MORRIS INSTITUTE FOR JUSTICE
3707 North Seventh Street, Suite 101
Phoenix, Arizona 85014-5095
(602) 252-3432
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]

I am one of many, many conservative lawyers targeted by the State Bar of Arizona who can no longer practice law due to its politicized lawfare. I had an unblemished 10 years of practicing law as an Arizona Assistant Attorney General, Special Assistant/Deputy County Attorney for the Maricopa County Attorney's Office and corporate attorney for Go Daddy. But because my name was briefly placed on a RICO lawsuit that Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas filed against Maricopa County Supervisors and Maricopa County Superior Court judges for colluding on things like refusing to apply the state's new law at the time, no bail for illegal immigrants who commit serious crimes (my name was placed on it after it was filed, and the complaint was withdrawn a couple of months later without any work from me), my law license was suspended in 2012 for 6 months. The judges circulated a memo instructing other members of the bench not to apply the law, which Andy had helped get passed.

The bar's reasoning was I was not “experienced” enough – this was after they first tried to make the case that I WAS experienced enough and should have known better. The reality is I had represented judges a few years prior at the Arizona Attorney General's Office against RICO lawsuits, so I had far more experience than the vast majority of attorneys in this area, as well as 10 years of practicing law, and I was supervised by the RICO expert for the Maricopa County Attorney's Office, Peter Spaw. He actually drafted some of the RICO lawsuit unlike me, and his portion was added to it after it was filed. Yet he merely received probation and kept his job. All of his bar disciplinary costs were paid for by the county, unlike mine.

The bar is so corrupt they will not let me back in to practice law until I pay over $100,000, the cost of the bar disciplinary proceedings not just against me, but against Andy and another superior, prosecutor Lisa Aubuchon. Note that in contrast, attorneys who are disbarred and agree they committed unethical actions, are often assessed around $2,000 in disciplinary costs. How is this even close to equal treatment? We have an email saved from the bar disciplinary counsel, John Gleason, where he said we would not be responsible for the costs of bringing him and his entire team of lawyers from Colorado to handle the trial against us – hotel, airfare, meals, etc. but this was not honored.

Andy and Lisa were fully disbarred unlike me, due to their roles in other things like attempting to prosecute Maricopa County Supervisor Don Stapley. He raised $70k for a national county supervisor position where he had NO OPPONENT and spent it almost entirely on luxury items, including three trips for his family, expensive stereo equipment and designer clothing in NYC boutiques. Rep. Jesse Jackson did the same exact thing and ended up serving two years in prison over it. Stapley got his fellow supervisors to award him $3.5 million of taxpayers' money for the “stress” of being prosecuted (the charges were dropped). I now say Cook County is no longer the most corrupt county in the nation due to that, Maricopa County is.

I now frequently write about bars targeting conservative attorneys, and believe the Arizona bar is the most corrupt in the country, since countless of my conservative attorney friends here have also been targeted and disciplined. I also hear about solo practitioners and minorities who are targeted, and am fully supporting the National Action Network's recent request to the DOJ to investigate the bar over this discrimination and violation of equal protection.

Please read the account Andy wrote up here about what happened to us - https://web.archive.org/w...rtyanvil.com/at.html

I can be contacted at [email protected], reverselawfareextinction.com and x.com/rach_ic

Most lawyers in the USA do not have to join a state bar to get to practice law. We at TexasBarSunset.com support your proposed reform. Here in Texas, we envy Arizonans for having this opportunity to force the discipline-inflicting branch of the Arizona Bar to basically "deunify" from the nonregulatory & even ideologically charged, "friend-buying" sections of Arizona's state bar. A state bar should not be able to coercively extract funds from compulsory members and use part of that money to purchase favorable press coverage & allies. Such (supposedly benign) inducements can, in turn, influence disciplinary judges, thereby making it easier for a state bar to secure convictions of supposedly "unethical" attorneys. The resulting culture of intimidation makes it tougher for member attorneys to combat excessive bar dues increases. It also makes it tougher to combat bar insiders' embezzling, like that plaguing the Texas Bar. Can you believe how the intimidation level, of which attorneys in Texas suffer, resulted in nearly a decade of ongoing embezzling among bar leadership, as exposed here?

http://TexasBarSunset.com/embezzling

Incidentally, isn't it remarkable how unpopular state bars are with compulsory members? Here's some data from Texas, for example:

http://www.TexasBarSunset.com/voter-abstention

Why not do as Virginia does, having one state bar association for voluntary activities, and the other for merely discipline and continuing legal education (CLE) authorizing, but not for CLE providing? In Texas the state bar even sells over $13 million annually in CLE. It also engages in surprise prosecutions, so lawyers are more eager to buy CLE and try to find out what Texas' (conveniently vague) ethics rules actually (purportedly) mean. The only ones who are happy with the outcome are the bar insiders. They make a fortune, but for what services, exactly?

http://www.TexasBarSunset.com/salaries

Arizona deserves better, and hopefully Texas will get better than its status quo, too. Why not look to Virginia's de-unified example and help Arizona be all it can be?

Anyhow, wouldn't we all do well to ask ourselves if we want the USA to become as lawless as some other countries are in our hemisphere? If we keep intimidating lawyers away from embracing new, unproven and unwealthy clients' cases & causes by holding the prospect of unpredictable ethics shakedowns above such potentially interested lawyers, the U.S. economy and societal safety levels will languish even further. Don't we deserve better? Nearly everyone suffers when state bars get unnecessarily excessive funding and influence.

Some clients who seek to stiff their lawyers weaponize the attorney discipline system to try to gain the upper hand. State bars that support that tactic in any way do a real disservice for society. When lawyers aren't eager to help create better economic opportunities for society, unemployed folks turn to unsavory activities to sustain their lifestyles. El Salvador has improved but our neighbor Mexico still leads the world in kidnappings, while having lots of murders, too. Do we want such economic malaise and safety hazards here in the USA, as well? My beloved & numerous friends from Mexico who relocated here to the USA sure don't want such further decline in the USA any more than they do in their native homeland. Meanwhile my friends still living in Mexico do not recommend their hostile societal conditions for us to embrace, either.

Why don't we unify behind Arizona's well-being and de-unify the state bar's activities from the disciplinary chaos it is presently still empowered to inflict? Let Arizona bar membership become voluntary. Then its remaining members will be much happier, as will those who prefer to opt-out of compulsory membership.

Sincerely,

Rich Robins, J.D.
[email protected]
Volunteer Editor: http://TexasBarSunset.com
Houston, Texas, 77006
X: https://x.com/texasbarsunset

Stacy Skankey (Bar # 035589)
Goldwater Institute
500 E. Coronado Rd.
Phoenix, Arizona 85004
(602) 462-5000
[email protected]

From:
Sheree D. Wright
IBF Law Group, PLLC
The Wrightway Foundation
3101 N. Central Ave., Suite 1250
Phoenix, AZ 85012
[email protected]

To:
SUPREME COURT OF ARIZONA
In the Matter of: Petition to Amend Supreme Court Rule 32(A)-(M) Arizona Supreme Court No. R-25-0001

COMMENT IN SUPPORT OF THE PETITION TO AMEND RULE 32 BY SHEREE WRIGHT, ESQ.

Pursuant to Rule 28(e) of the Arizona Rules of the Supreme
Court, I, Sheree Wright, respectfully submit the following attachments in support and comment in support of the Petition to Amend Supreme Court Rule 32, which would eliminate mandatory membership in the State Bar of Arizona and transfer regulatory authority to the Arizona Supreme Court and its Administrative Office.

Andrew W. Gould #013234
Emily G. Gould #036184
HOLTZMAN VOGEL BARAN
TORCHINSKY & JOSEFIAK PLLC
2555 East Camelback Road, Suite 700
Phoenix, Arizona 85016
(602) 388-1262
[email protected]
[email protected]