California Attorney Registry Methodology and Data Standards

This page states how the published record is assembled, how often it changes, what is deliberately left out, and where it is known to be imperfect. It is the standing methodology statement for the registry; anything a page here asserts about an attorney should be traceable through the rules below. Who publishes it and how it is funded is a separate question, answered at about.

Source hierarchy

Sources are ranked, and a lower one never overwrites a higher one.

1. The State Bar of California roll — the mandatory licensing body for every attorney practising in the state, and the sole source of identity. Name, bar number, admission date, license status, address-of-record locality, and certified specialist credentials come from here and from nowhere else. The registry does not create attorney records; it indexes public ones.
2. Public records of the courts — cases of record and published decisions, retained with the citation that identifies them.
3. Verified attorney submissions — biography, practice description, and firm details supplied by an attorney who has proved control of the profile. Labeled as attorney-supplied and reviewed before publication. A submission may add to the record; it may not contradict the roll.

Current extract: The registry indexes 278,688 licensee records from the State Bar of California's attorney roll — 202,146 active and 76,542 inactive. Source: State Bar of California — Records request 26-1100 — full attorney roll dataset (2026-07 extract), counts verified at import. Observed 2026-07-22.

Update cadence

• Attorney records — synchronized against State Bar data daily at 04:00 Pacific. License status is the field most likely to move between syncs.
• Verification state — updated when a claim completes, when a manual identity review resolves, or when an official-source correction lands. It records what was confirmed, never how good anyone is.
• Legal answers — reviewed against the statute or decision each one cites, and revised when the authority changes. California sessions typically take effect on January 1, which is the heaviest review window of the year.
• Sourced figures — each carries an observation date and an expiry. A figure past expiry fails the build rather than rendering stale.

What gets its own page, and why

Not every dimension of the roll deserves a URL. A page is published only where there is enough underlying record for it to answer the question it appears to answer; below the threshold, the dimension still exists in the data but no page is generated.

• Attorneys — every licensee on the roll, all 278,688 of them (202,146 active), with inactive records kept and marked rather than hidden.
• Law firms — published at 10 or more attorneys listing the firm, after name variants are merged onto one canonical spelling.
• Law schools — published at 10 or more California-licensed alumni. The roll stores State Bar abbreviations, which are mapped to display names; the URL is derived from the raw value so improving a display name can never break a live address.
• Places and practice areas — 58 counties and 32 cities across 20 practice areas, combined only where the pairing has attorneys behind it.
• Legal answers — 215 standalone questions, each carrying its controlling authority inline.

What is deliberately not published

• Scores, ratings, rankings, and grades. None are computed, so none can be sold, gamed, or misread as an endorsement. Directory order is last name, first name, bar number — mechanical and identical for every attorney.
• Predictions of outcome. Nothing here estimates what a matter is worth or how it will end.
• The word "specialist" as a description. California regulates it. The registry says "attorneys who practice" a field, and reserves certified-specialist language for the official State Bar credential, always attributed to the certifying body.
• Contact details behind a paywall. Public information from the official record is shown free.

Known limitations

• License status can change between daily syncs. For any time-sensitive determination, verify against the State Bar of California directly — the official record governs.
• Practice-area attribution reflects observed concentration in the record, not certification, and an attorney may practise in fields the record does not show.
• Address-of-record locality is where an attorney receives State Bar mail. It is a strong signal of where someone practises and an imperfect one.
• Firm attribution depends on how attorneys spell their employer on the roll. Variants are merged, and the merge is not flawless.
• Statutory figures that adjust periodically — small-estate thresholds, homestead amounts, damages caps — state their adjustment mechanism next to the current number.

Corrections

Report an error to info@californiaattorneyregistry.com with the page URL and what is wrong; requests are acknowledged within 3 business days. Where this site and the official State Bar record disagree, the official record wins and the page is corrected to match it. Attorneys can claim a profile and edit it directly. The full corrections policy is on the about page.

Related documentation

Trust markers and what each one confirms: how verification works. Citable figures, licensing, and the machine-readable file: registry data. The same provenance written for AI systems: data and sources for machines.