Afternoon Briefs: California opens process for retroactive bar admission; judge suspended after election-fraud charge
Image from Shutterstock.com.
California opens applications for retroactive bar admission
Provisional licensure applications, for people who recently did not pass the California bar exam but would have with the new cut score, are now open. People who took the California bar exam between July 2015 and February 2020 and scored no lower than 1390 on the exam are eligible, according to a Feb. 24 news release from the State Bar of California. Full licensure for the group also requires 300 hours of supervised practice. The deadline to submit applications is May 31. (State Bar of California news release)
Justice of the peace suspended after election-fraud charge
A Texas justice of the peace from the San Antonio area has been suspended without pay after he was charged with organized election fraud, unlawfully possessing a ballot, and unlawfully assisting a voter by mail. Tomas Ramirez told Law360 that the charges against him are unfounded. He said the indictment is based on voters mistaking voter registration cards that he handed out during his campaign for ballots, which he is not allowed to handle. “There’s no way there’s evidence that I unlawfully helped people vote,” Ramirez told Law360. (Law360)
Jones Day is back on hacker list
Jones Day is back on a hacker list of companies being asked to pay ransom to avoid exposure of their data. The law firm’s name was dropped from the list earlier this week, but its name was restored to the list Thursday. Jones Day didn’t comment when contacted by Law.com, but cybersecurity experts told Law.com that targets can be removed from the list if they are negotiating with the hacker and restored if the talks break down. Another possibility is a lack of communication within the hacker group on whether a company should even be on the list, one expert said. Jones Day’s data was exposed because of a hack of its file transfer vendor, Accellion. The vendor said it has since patched all known vulnerabilities in its product. (Law.com here and here)
Software glitch said to delay release for some Arizona inmates
Some Arizona inmates are reportedly stuck in prison for too long because of problems with the software that calculates release dates. The software, known as ACIS, isn’t finding nonviolent inmates authorized to take special programming to earn early release credits under a 2019 law, sources told KJZZ, an NPR member station. And the software isn’t recalculating the release dates for inmates who complete the programming, the sources said. The prison system is doing the calculations manually and has contended that release dates are not being delayed. (KJZZ, Gizmodo)
