SAN FRANCISCO — Chatsworth attorney Bradley Howard Spear may soon be relieved of a 2015 suspension handed down over issues caused by excessive drinking of alcohol, according to a recent State Bar of California recommendation.
Spear "has demonstrated to the satisfaction of this court his rehabilitation, present fitness to practice, and present learning and ability in the general law so that he may be relieved from his actual suspension from the practice of law," said the 11-page decision and order granting petition from relief from actual suspension issued Feb. 20 by the state bar court.
The effective date of the order is March 10, according to information on his state bar profile. Spear's recommended discipline was among the dispositions filed earlier this month by the state bar court's hearing department for February.
Spear was admitted to the California bar on April 8, 1998, according to his profile at the state bar website.
Spear's prior discipline before the state bar includes private reprovals and the suspension handed down in 2015, and from which he sought to be relieved, according to the decision. In November 2015 the California Supreme Court handed down three years' probation with two years of actual suspension, and required Spear to attend Alcoholics Anonymous or a similar group and submit to alcohol and drug testing, according to the decision.
Spear's "extensive disciplinary history involves neither the practice of law nor any complaint by a client," the decision said. "Instead, it resulted from petitioner's prior problems with alcoholism. That problem resulted in his being disciplined five times in the past for misdemeanor criminal convictions resulting from his alcoholism."
Since his 2015 suspension, Spear has been sober, he has submitted quarterly reports and to drug testing, and he has passed the state bar's ethics school, according to the decision.