SACRAMENTO - The new leader of California's trial lawyers has a daunting task before him: figure out how to remain a significant and influential force in state government with a tort reform advocate in the governor's seat.

Don Ernst, who was installed as president of Consumer Attorneys of California in November, is using traditional lobbying tools to accomplish that goal. In his back pocket, he has four ballot initiatives he can use as ammo to prod lawmakers and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger into passing laws that favor the lawyers.

Voters usually turn down ballot initiatives, but sometimes one gets enough votes to become law. That can make policymakers nervous.

Ernst is also betting on some less controversial legislation aimed at making the practice of law easier and more efficient for both plaintiff and defense lawyers. That's the kind of effort that has worked in the recent past, even meeting with the approval of Gov. Schwarzenegger, who campaigned as a tort reformer.

In 2007, Ernst's predecessor, Ray Boucher, had to balance his presidential duties with fighting the Catholic Church. Boucher represented alleged victims of clergy sexual abuse.

During his tenure, Boucher successfully lobbied to expand the opportunities to make court appearances by telephone. That could reduce the time and money wasted in traffic burning expensive gasoline, not to mention saving time on clients' bills.

Similarly, this year Ernst said he wants to improve the use of new technology in courtrooms and law offices.

"I want to make the practice of law better for the individual practitioner," he said. "We are planning to sponsor an electronic discovery bill to set guidelines for that. Surprisingly, in California there are no electronic discovery guidelines codified."

The legislation might require uniformity in the electronic filing of discovery documents, cover the preservation and production of e-mails and regulate the retrieval of deleted electronic messages.

"We are working with defense counsel and the Judicial Council to make middle-of-the-road guidelines for courts to utilize," Ernst said.

He said he wants to increase access to the courts for the average working person. Many low- and middle-income litigants have been unable to either afford lawyers' fees or to persuade attorneys to take cases that might require lots of time but result in small judgments, he said.

"That's one of my goals this year: to find ways to have smaller cases adjudicated in our system," Ernst said.

Then there are the four pending initiatives, which could be headed to the June ballot. The secretary of state has cleared them to be circulated by signature-gatherers but it's not known if Ernst's organization is actively pursuing the effort.

One would give people the right to sue corporate executives to force them to relinquish their salaries and investment income if they had been convicted for fraud. Another would require corporations to get shareholder approval of compensation for their highest paid executives.

A third measure would take 25 percent of punitive-damage awards and use the money to fund state enforcement of consumer laws. A fourth would hold corporate executives personally liable for their conduct and expose them to criminal charges for any illegal activity committed by the corporations.

It's not certain the measures are going anywhere. Neither Ernst nor other plaintiff lawyers have indicated they are willing to plunk down the million of dollars that would likely be needed to get their initiatives passed or even to gather the signatures necessary to qualify for the ballot.

Tort reformers, who are traditionally opponents of the group led by Ernst, don't seem worried about the trial lawyers' measures.

"We never really took them seriously because they were thrown up as a counter to our proposal," said John Sullivan, president of the tort-reform group Civil Justice Association of California. "They officially die in another six weeks. We don't see any evidence of signature gatherers."

He also said voters might associate them with high-profile cases of attorneys getting in trouble because of their tactics, such as William Lerach, the San Diego lawyer who pleaded guilty to conspiracy in a plaintiff-kickback scheme. The public, Sullivan said, would be "weighing plaintiffs' lawyers' behavior if they were to look at any of these proposals on the ballot."

The impetus for the proposals was as a counter to a measure put forward by a tort-reform group that would have revised state class-action rules. That effort was later abandoned.

Lawmakers who encounter Ernst this year can expect to find a "pretty down-to-earth" guy, said Christine Spagnoli, a partner in Greene, Broillet & Wheeler of Santa Monica, and the consumer attorneys' president-elect who will succeed Ernst.

"Don is a consensus builder," Spagnoli said. "He's helped to make sure that everybody gets along."

When it came to choosing a career, Ernst, 58, said he decided he could have a greater impact on society by becoming a lawyer than he could by continuing in the path of his parents, who were ranchers in Paso Robles.

But nearly 40 years after leaving the farm, Ernst is connected to it in many ways. He practices law in a small community, San Luis Obispo, that sees itself as rural. He has close friends in the winery business and he dines weekly with his parents.

"The gifts they gave me were great: integrity, do the right thing, hard work," Ernst said. "Those concepts have been great guideposts in my life and I'm eternally grateful to my parents."

Ernst is proud of the fact that he's been married for 25 years to the same woman, Teri; that he has practiced with the same partner, Ray Mattison of Ernst & Mattison, for 27 years and that he has employed the same secretary, Susie Richardson, for 25 years.

The two partners "really allow our individual personalities to shine," said Susan Devine, Ernst's litigation paralegal, explaining why people tend to stick with them over the decades. Devine has worked for the law firm for 27 years.

Richardson said her boss sometimes takes on too much because he can't say no to anyone.

"He'll do a lot of things for people that most lawyers won't do," she said.

Ernst said he realized his connection to his community while driving a tractor on dark December nights on his family's farm.

"It was nighttime, cold and dusty. You'd see your neighbors doing the same thing," he said. "You were alone, but you weren't alone because others were doing what you were doing to survive."

Ernst, one of three children in his family, worked six days a week during harvest season, starting when he was 11. He planted wheat and barley during the winter holiday break from school.

"If it rained it was a good year," he said. "If it didn't rain, all of the businesses would suffer because it was truly an agrarian community."

In his senior year at Paso Robles High School, a math teacher persuaded him to choose Stanford University over California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo where most of his friends were going.

"Personally, it was a real eye-opener," Ernst said. "Stanford was a cool place. It was an exceptional gathering of people and ideas and cultures. It was a hot bed of early '60s free speech."

He graduated in 1972 with a degree in economics. He had considered living abroad after studying in Florence, Italy, but Ernst decided he could make more of a difference in society if he went to law school.

"The law can protect people; it can hurt people," Ernst said. "So, as a lawyer, if you can navigate those rules you can make a difference in people's lives."

In the fall of 1972, he had saved enough money to pay for the first semester of law school at the University of San Diego, but he had to borrow money and find a job to pay for the rest. He went to work as a researcher at a title company the summer before his first year, and worked as a law clerk during his second year.

After earning his law degree in 1975, Ernst went to work for Goldberg & Link, a San Diego criminal-defense firm, until he passed the bar examination. The following year he moved to San Luis Obispo to be near his family and position himself for trial work.

In July 1976, he was hired as a contract public defender in San Luis Obispo County. Two years later, the regular public defender left, and Ernst - who had been handling juvenile cases in the local municipal court, along with the occasional felony - moved into the job.

In 1980, Ernst formed his partnership with Mattison. The two had become friends while working in the tiny four-office building housing their respective workplaces. Ernst continued representing criminal defendants until 1984, while he moved into personal-injury work.

Although he has had his share of big lawsuits, he said sometimes the smaller cases can be more influential on a career.

A sexual harassment case that took six-and-a-half months to try in 1997 taught him to balance his family life with work, he said.

A bad faith insurance action, Mariscal v. Old Republic Life Insurance Co., 42 Cal.App.4th 1627 (1996), eliminated one defense for insurers. A judge ruled that an insurer acted unreasonably if it ignored evidence that supported the insured's claim in its investigation.

"I'm very proud of it," Ernst said. "It is an often-cited case."

A third case involving a $5.4 million award for a boy with massive brain damage from a car accident in a parking lot illustrates the kind of litigation that never makes the front page, Ernst said.

"People always want to know the best cases you have or the biggest," he said. "No one reads about when a lawyer gets a reasonable settlement that has changed a person's life."

Scott Radovich, former San Luis Obispo County Bar Association president, said Ernst and his partner have for years organized local political fundraising events, promoting Democrats for legislative and gubernatorial seats. Radovich, a mediator who used to practice personal injury law for plaintiffs and defendants, got his first client through a referral from Ernst in 1979.

"They are," said Radovich, referring to Ernst and Mattison, "the local driving force in getting attorneys involved in what matters in this state."