Ventura College Of Law

Call it the law school of hard knocks. Its students are cops and construction workers, paralegals and probation officers, homemakers and school teachers. A disenchanted doctor here, a corporate executive there. The 170-student Ventura College of Law is where the frustrated and ambitious go at midlife for a new start, or for a leg up in a career that needs a boost. Typically, they are 37 years old, work full time and are raising families.

The man credited with rescuing the Ventura College of Law from near ruin five years ago has been chosen to become the first ethics officer for Los Angeles city government. Benjamin Bycel, the school's dean since 1986, was selected by the Los Angeles Ethics Commission to be its staff director and enforce an ethics law approved by city voters last year, commission President Dennis Curtis said Thursday.

A prominent Ventura defense attorney, taking part in a forum Saturday on criminal trials, predicted that former football great O.J. Simpson will get a "jury pardon" and not be convicted of murdering his ex-wife and her friend. Louis (Chuck) Samonsky, one of four speakers at the Ventura County Bar Assn. event, said the evidence points overwhelmingly to Simpson's guilt but that will not make a difference.

The dean and four directors of the Channel Islands University law school--all prominent members of the Ventura County legal community--have resigned under the pressure of a lawsuit filed by the state attorney general's office accusing them of mismanaging funds.

* Attorney Loye M. Barton of Ventura, a partner in the firm of Norman, Dowler, Sawyer, Israel & Hancock, has been elected chairwoman of Easter Seals Tri-Counties California. Barton has been affiliated with the Easter Seal Society since 1996. She recently served as president of the Ventura Soroptimists. * Robert H. Bartlein has been elected for a second term as president of the American Lung Assn. of Santa Barbara and Ventura counties for 1999-2000. He is president of Bartlein & Co.

The atmosphere in the Simi Valley Courthouse will change, lawyers predict, when Ventura attorney David W. Long dons his black robe on Nov. 1 for the first time and takes the bench. Ventura County's judges appointed Long to replace retiring Commissioner John V. Paventi, who ranked lowest in a bar association poll of the county's 26 judges last year and whom one lawyer called "frightening."

Deputy Dist. Atty. Rebecca S. Riley was appointed a Municipal Court judge by Gov. Pete Wilson on Monday and will become the only woman on the county's lower court when she is sworn in today. Riley, 49, head of the district attorney's major fraud unit, is the third prosecutor or former prosecutor to be named as a local judge this year by Wilson. A fourth appointee is a former civil lawyer.

A Ventura lawyer already facing drug charges may be in more trouble for asking female job applicants to sign a contract allowing him to engage in "sexual acts, touching, lewd behavior, etc." Ventura County Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury confirmed Thursday that he will ask the State Bar to investigate the contract that attorney Douglas Andrew Palaschak admits he wrote.

After 11 years on the Ventura County bench, Superior Court Judge Barbara A. Lane savors a rich diet of complicated civil and environmental cases. A relative newcomer to the Municipal Court, Judge David W. Long thrives on the varied menu of small claims, civil and criminal cases. Both share a hunger for their work. And both were rewarded for it this week by their colleagues when they were named Superior Court and Municipal Court Judges of the Year.