Civil actions and attorneys

The law narrows when attorney-to-attorney referrals require State Bar certification and gives parties a stipulated process to review sensitive personal records before opponents receive them. It also confirms that electronic service does not add extra notice time for specified civil motions.

What the law does ​

• Exempts active attorneys and law firms from lawyer-referral-service rules when, while representing their own clients, they refer unsolicited matters outside their expertise or matters they cannot take because of capacity, capability, or representation criteria.
• Requires those incidental referrals to comply with the California Rules of Professional Conduct.
• Clarifies that electronic service does not add the extra two days otherwise required for specified motion notices served by fax, express mail, or overnight delivery.
• Creates a voluntary, written-stipulation procedure allowing a party or a decedent’s representative to review specified medical, psychiatric, addiction-treatment, sexual-health, reproductive-health, pathology, and related records before release in civil discovery.
• Requires the reviewing party to provide needed record-release authorizations, complete review within 30 calendar days, or within 7 calendar days in preferential cases, and identify withheld records in a privilege log.
• Treats missed review and disclosure deadlines as a waiver of objections, requiring release of all obtained records without exclusion or redaction.

Who it affects ​

• Attorneys, law firms, lawyer referral services, and potential legal clients.
• Parties and nonparties whose sensitive personal or medical records are sought in civil litigation.
• Litigants, records-service vendors, and courts handling civil motions and discovery.

Breakdown ​

Attorney Referral Exemption ​

AB 540 expands the types of attorneys who are not treated as lawyer referral services. An individual attorney or a group of attorneys actively handling clients’ legal work may make incidental referrals to another attorney in specified circumstances without being classified as a lawyer referral service.

Key takeaways

• The bill adds an exemption for individual attorneys and groups of attorneys who are actively providing legal services to their own clients.
• The exemption applies when referring a potential client is incidental to the attorneys’ active client representation.
• Qualifying attorneys are not considered lawyer referral services for these referrals.
• As a result, the State Bar’s lawyer referral service certification requirements do not apply to qualifying referrals.

Motion Notice and Record Privacy ​

The bill clarifies that serving certain civil-motion notices electronically does not add extra time to the required notice period before a hearing. It also creates a process, when the parties agree, for a party or nonparty to review sensitive medical and personal records for privacy and relevance before giving them to the party that subpoenaed them.

Key takeaways

• Electronic service of notices for summary judgment, judgment on the pleadings, and other covered motions does not trigger the added notice time that applies to certain delivery methods.
• The bill makes related updates to keep the motion-notice rules consistent with this clarification.
• When there is a stipulation, a party or nonparty may screen sensitive medical and personal records before producing them in response to a subpoena.
• The bill sets a procedure and timeline for that review of subpoenaed records.