The board that governs the State Bar of Texas meets Sept. 25 to decide whether to put a change in the rules for investigating complaints against lawyers to a vote of the state’s active lawyers.
The rule at issue sets the clock on grievance investigations. Under the current rule, the bar’s chief disciplinary counsel has 60 days from the date an accused lawyer’s answer is due to decide whether there is “just cause” to pursue the complaint. The proposed version adds a third option: the counsel may instead set the case for an investigatory hearing, and the deadline is met. Several smaller changes ride with it. One would let the clock run longer when a subpoena is contested. Another strikes the word “nonadversarial” from the rule’s description of those hearings. A new section would require the counsel, on concluding at any point before a scheduled hearing that just cause is absent, to cancel it and send the complaint to the docket where a panel decides whether to dismiss.
The committee that drafts disciplinary rules published the proposal in the Texas Register on Feb. 13, took written comment through March 31 and held a hearing by telephone the next day. The bar’s own website and its board materials could not be retrieved before publication, so whether directors will be handed the proposal as published or a version amended after comment could not be established.
A yes vote does not put the rule in force. If a majority approves, the board asks the Supreme Court of Texas to order a referendum, and the rule goes out in ballot form to the bar’s roughly 118,000 active members. Nothing can be adopted that the membership has not approved, and the court has the last word. That sequence exists because of the bar’s 2017 Sunset review, which built the rulemaking process and restored the investigative subpoena power this rule governs.
Also up: the bar’s investment policy, an approved list of brokers, a banking depository, and a public acknowledgment of gifts to the fund that pays for the bar’s Austin headquarters — a step state law requires of any judicial-branch agency accepting a donation of $500 or more. Directors will also vote on a subcommittee’s recommendation in an appeal by a lawyer denied board certification in civil appellate law. Nothing about that matter is public beyond the agenda line, and no findings have been made.
Meeting at a glance
- When
- 8 a.m. CT Friday, September 25, 2026. Notice TRD 2026005586 was filed September 17.
- Where
- Texas Law Center, Room 101, 1414 Colorado St., Austin. Also available by Zoom. Public comment is taken under item 5.
- Governing body & chair
- State Bar of Texas Board of Directors — 46 voting members: 30 attorneys elected by district, six public members named by the Supreme Court, four at-large appointees, and three State Bar officers and three Texas Young Lawyers Association officers elected statewide. Chair Steve Alfonso Chiscano.
- Format
- Regular board meeting. Committee reports, a disciplinary rule recommendation, four finance votes and one certification appeal. The bar is an agency of the judicial branch and its board meetings fall under the open meetings law.
- Live video
- Streams on the bar’s YouTube channel.
- Full agenda
- Secretary of State Open Meeting Viewer · Board materials
Board leadership
- Steve Alfonso Chiscano — chair of the board; San Antonio litigator.
- G. David Smith — president; Rockwall; Smith & Lee Lawyers.
- Sarah Clower Keathley — president-elect; Corsicana; Keathley & Keathley.
- Santos Vargas — immediate past president; San Antonio; Davis & Santos.
- E.A. “Trey” Apffel III — executive director since December 2017.
- Seana Willing — chief disciplinary counsel since 2019.
Officers confirmed against the bar’s own news releases on the April 2026 elections and the June 11, 2026 swearing-in, and against the posted agenda, which lists each by role. The full 46-member board is not reproduced here. The bar’s website would not load for this report, so the roster of district directors and public members could not be checked; the chair of the Commission for Lawyer Discipline for the year beginning Sept. 1 could not be confirmed and is not named. Meeting contact: Jennifer Reames, 512-427-1415.