Legal Question in Legal Ethics in California

Ethical misconduct in Federal court is considered a state offense in the state in which the court sits. Each federal court requires attorneys who appear in that court to be admitted to the bar of that court, and has their own ethics rules for practice before that court, but they really are just formalities -- unless an offense occurs in the presence of a judge who immediately sanctions the attorney and refers the attorney to the court administration to be removed from the bar of that court, any offense in Federal court is referred to the state bar for discipline. Then the Federal court applies whatever discipline is applied by the state bar to the attorney's standing with the Federal court's bar. So if the attorney is suspended by the state bar, they are suspended by the Federal bar as well; disbarred by the state = disbarred by the Federal court, etc. This is actually true even if the offense is in state court. The Federal court bar status is just a mirror of the state bar status. If the misconduct was malpractice, then the situation is a little different. If the grounds for Federal diversity of citizenship jurisdiction would apply if the dispute between attorney and client was, say, a business dispute, then the client could sue in federal court just as with any diversity jurisdiction case. In the absence of diversity jurisdiction, however, the case would be remanded to state court if filed in Federal court.