When the State Bar of Arizona decided to learn what its members thought about disciplinary procedures, it needed someone to poll its nearly 25,000 lawyers and other legal professionals.

The bar reached out to Arizona State University’s School of Public Affairs (SPA) to create and administer a survey, which uncovered several opportunities for organizational improvement.

The project began, interestingly enough, at a Sun Devil football game.

Early in the 2023 football season, SPA Director Shannon Portillo, the Lattie and Elva Coor Presidential Chair, was invited to view a game from ASU President Michael Crow’s suite at Mountain America Stadium. There, she met 2023–24 State Bar of Arizona President Benjamin Taylor, an attorney with the Phoenix law firm of Taylor & Gomez LLP.

Portillo said Taylor talked about some member concerns regarding disciplinary procedures, and how California had recently studied outcomes of its own process.

“We talked during the game about replicating it in Arizona, but we determined Arizona didn’t have the same kind of data,” Portillo said. “But we could do a broad survey to see how lawyers understand the disciplinary process.”

Portillo sent Taylor a two-page proposal. Within a month, she met with the bar’s board of governors, where she presented it. Portillo donated her time to conduct the study, as did ASU Assistant Vice President for Community Engagement Kenja Hassan, who recently earned her PhD, and SPA Associate Professor Susan Miller. The State Bar Foundation funded the cost of a graduate student assistant, Andrew Bertucci, who is pursuing a PhD degree.

The board approved the study, which was open for recipients to fill out from late November 2023 to early January 2024. A total of 2,481 members (9.4%) completed the survey.

‘An opportunity for self-examination’

More than 1,100 of those completing it also gave written comments in addition to answering its multiple-choice questions. The number of written comments demonstrated that members were definitely interested in the subject and what they were thinking, Portillo said.

“This said to us this was an important topic,” she said. “Typically, we see a small number of people in surveys writing out comments. This shows they care about the process and whatever it takes to make it better.”

Portillo, Hassan and Miller, a fellow in SPA’s Center for Organization Research and Design, completed survey data analysis over the course of the year and released the results Dec. 1.

The survey gauged respondents’ perceptions of bias and overall effectiveness of the state bar’s disciplinary process, asking some specific questions of lawyers and other legal professionals who had participated in the process themselves, or knew someone who had.

Taylor said he found the ASU research team to be thorough and professional.

“The report showed that the State Bar of Arizona needs to address aspects of the discipline process so that it can best serve our members and the public,” Taylor said. “People who took the survey perceived that there is a difference in how lawyers are treated based on political status, financial resources, type of practice area and race/gender/ethnicity of the attorney, and that the bar is more punitive than supportive of small firms.”

Taylor said the report gives the bar “an opportunity for self-examination and to decide how to more effectively communicate the discipline process so that everyone involved is treated fairly. I thank Dr. Shannon Portillo, Dr. Susan Miller, Dr. Kenja Hassan and doctoral student Andrew Bertucci for their work.”

A ‘no-brainer’ to work with ASU team

Ted Schmidt, an attorney with the Tucson law firm Schmidt, Sethi & Akmajian, succeeded Taylor as state bar president for 2024–25. Schmidt said when his organization determined it should survey its members on the discipline system, its leaders “immediately recognized the need for help from social scientists with the expertise to craft the survey and analyze its results.”

As a result, Schmidt said, it was a “no-brainer” to turn to Portillo, Hassan, Miller and Bertucci.

“This exceptional and experienced team met with our leadership many times over the last year to properly create and administer the survey,” Schmidt said. “It was an amazing collaboration, which went above and beyond our expectations in terms of both the quality of the survey and its results, as well as the insightful analysis of the results by the ASU team of experts.”

Recently, other nonprofits and government entities have similarly partnered with the School of Public Affairs, Portillo said, from county supervisors to state education officials to veterans’ organizations. School faculty members also have developed educational tools for middle and high school students learning about public budgeting.

Portillo said she is eager for the state bar’s next steps.

“We had received incredible ideas to work with the membership to improve the process,” she said. “We look forward to seeing what they’re going to do moving forward.”

The state bar magazine, Arizona Attorney, published a story about the survey in its December issue, which contains a link to the survey results.