Ethics Rule Fails on Lawyer-Client Sex : State Bar: Task of regulating love life of the state’s 128,000 licensed attorneys, required by a 1989 state law, was sent back to Committee on Admissions and Competence.

After two hours of heated debate Saturday, the California State Bar took three votes but fell just short of making California the first state in the nation to adopt strict ethical rules barring attorneys from having sex with their clients.

After the Board of Governors failed to muster the votes needed to pass a complete ban on lawyer-client sex, two compromise measures also were narrowly rejected.

Because the California State Bar must comply with a 1989 state law ordering it to draft rules governing lawyer-client sex, the task of regulating the sex lives of the state’s 128,000 licensed attorneys was sent back to the group’s Committee on Admissions and Competence for further discussion. Ultimately, the state Supreme Court has to approve such regulations.

The committee already had approved one of the compromise measures Friday. It would have prohibited a lawyer from requiring or demanding sexual relations with a client, from coercing or intimidating a client into having sex and from representing a sexual partner if it would “impair the (lawyer’s) ability to perform legal services competently.”

That compromise, which generated most of the two-hour debate Saturday, ultimately lost because some felt it was too strong and others felt it was too weak.

Some opponents said it was an invasion of privacy that would create an unnecessary stigma for the vast majority of lawyers who are above reproach in their relationships with clients.

“The question is do we want the state in our bedrooms?” asked Irvine lawyer Mark Alan Wright, who is not a member of the board. “The answer, from attorneys I’ve spoken to, is absolutely no.”

Assemblywoman Lucille Roybal-Allard, (D-Los Angeles), who first proposed a near-total ban, said the compromise measure was “biased in favor of the attorney” and it failed to offer “any protection whatsoever” from unscrupulous lawyers seeking to use their position to take sexual advantage of their clients.

Even though the problem is difficult to measure, Roybal-Allard said, regulations like those governing some doctors and psychotherapists are needed. “No profession is without its bad apples, and no profession is a sacred cow,” she said. “If the Bar cannot put a strong provision in place . . . I assure you the Legislature is ready to accept that responsibility.”

Richard A. Annotico, a Los Angeles-based board member, said women undergoing divorce are particularly vulnerable to the advances of their attorneys. “I have this vision of a vulture covetously eyeing a defenseless, injured lamb,” he said. “I’m not asking you to vote against love or even lust. I’m asking you to condemn lechery.”

Another vote on the subject could come as early as March, said board Vice President Robert M. Talcott.

Roybal-Allard said she demanded the rules after two women claimed that famed divorce attorney Marvin Mitchelson had sexually assaulted them. Mitchelson was never prosecuted and he has denied any wrongdoing.

Some lawyers lamented that the public’s perception of divorce attorneys has been unfairly colored by the libidinous lawyer Arnold Becker on the television show “L.A. Law.”

California’s efforts to regulate the sex lives of its lawyers also has received national attention, not all of it serious. Comic Jay Leno recently told a national television audience that he thought the best alternative would be to prohibit lawyers from having sex “ at all, “ so they couldn’t procreate.

While the association was arguing the measure in a meeting room at the Sheraton Grande Hotel downtown, the group’s contingent of young lawyers, which was at a gathering on another floor, took up the issue during a luncheon meeting.

“If the only intercourse lawyers are allowed to have is verbal,” said Larry Greenfield, a member of the California Young Lawyers Assn., “it is a sad state of affairs for the State Bar.” Another young lawyer, Jennifer Conn of Visalia, said many single lawyers would have to revert to celibacy if they couldn’t consort with their clients, as long as it didn’t affect their legal representation. “I work 12 hours a day, and I only meet lawyers and clients,” she said. “And I wouldn’t have sex with another lawyer, that’s for sure.”

“This is the kind of attitude that’s hard to deal with,” said one exasperated young attorney, Stacey Gurian-Sherman of Oakland. “There’s way too much flippancy. This is a serious subject.”