Dean's Address

A wedge is being driven between the trial lawyer and their clients and between formerly respectful adversaries. Things move faster, more has to be in writing, more motions are filed, there is more anger and more lack of respect ‑ like too many rats in a cage ‑we turn on each other. Pressure, expense, competition and lack of experience have made dignity and civility an endangered species.

On the other hand, with all these changes and difficulties, the trial bar has accomplished more in the last thirty years than in the entire two centuries before. Trial lawyers have taken the place of government. Today we police the people's interaction with the commercial establishment. We ‑ in our role as trial lawyers ‑ have become guardians of the public institutions of commerce and health.

In the fifties and sixties we drove without seatbelts, in dangerous cars and everyone smoked. The world is different today because trial lawyers have challenged traditional manufacturing and marketing techniques and demanded that the world be a safer place in which to live and raise our children. We have raised the bar for American commerce by demanding they meet reasonable standards for consumer expectations of safety and reliability. Today our children don't go to school in buildings leaking deadly asbestos fibers.

Thousands have been, and continue to be compensated for the harm it caused. At the behest of governments unwilling to take the political and financial risk, trial lawyers banded together and took on big tobacco. Today, in many areas, we have funds to reimburse and bans on aggressive add campaigns that were designed to entrap and addict our children. We have funds to educate and force the industry to be responsible.

The Firestone tire story is well known. It was not government watch dogs or a safety agency that sounded the warning. It was one dogged, tenacious attorney that turned over that particular corporate rock.

At the start of the twenty‑first century we have safer, more stable and crashworthy cars. Our drugs are tested more carefully and most products have more comprehensive warnings. Millions of dollars are put into cleaning up toxic sites. There are disclaimers and warnings on everything from baby car seats to home sales and initial public offerings. Even our hot coffee is safer.

While plaintiff attorneys have pushed the envelope and demanded ever more, the defense bar has protected the commercial institutions that continue to drive our economy and maintain us in the forefront of the global markets. They have held up a mirror of rationalism and common sense to an army of putative victims ‑ denying compensation to all but those with claims of true merit. They have stemmed the tide of innovative claims and required that any new theory meet an exacting test of law and evidence. They have protected business, medicine and public institutions with the energy and passion of road warriors ‑ ensuring the economic vitality of the most productive nation in the world.

Together‑ as trial advocates ‑ we have made the nation and the world a better place for our children and at the same time preserved the right of industrial innovation and commercial success.

Today technology has altered the face of trial practice as well. I started in the sixties dictating to a secretary who took shorthand. I left a message with a real person. It took. time for a letter to be transcribed (maybe even enough time to rethink an angry letter. Pleadings were crafted artfully. There was humanity and true social interaction in the entire process. I seem to remember having plenty of time for thoughtful introspection and even strategizing. When I left the office, the drive was a pleasant interlude.

Well, things are certainly different now. At first I couldn't stand voice mail. Now if I have a thought in the middle of the night I can call and leave a message as long as I want ‑ to be picked up ‑ whenever! Everywhere I see lawyers I see cell phones in use, at meetings, in the car, at lunch, on the way into or out of court. This tool has changed the way we practice and the nature of our relationship with our clients, our office and other lawyers. People expect to be able, to get a hold of us anytime, anywhere.

Oh, and what happened to our books? In my office in 1990, close to 2000 sq. ft. of expensive space was devoted to our library. We were proud of it. We spent thousands to update it constantly. We had a librarian. By 1997, when my firm split up, we had to pay someone to haul it away ‑ it had become worthless. Now we do legal research on line.

I know when I started I could work on 75 cases and still have time to think. Things didn't happen so fast. There weren't so many court rules, not as much discovery and not as much access to data. Today most young lawyers are in‑putting and e‑mailing or faxing on their own. It's nothing to have four or five exchanges of letters or pleadings in a single day! Email allows immediate, current thought to be instantaneously transmitted.

Unfortunately however, there is a whole new culture in this email process.  Things are often written "as thought", with little filtering of content. These communications are usually abrupt, poorly constructed and then vanish into cyberspace with a simple click of the mouse. Sometimes I receive replies to my e‑mails meant to go to someone else Recently, a friend e‑mailed his new medical expert in a plaintiff's medical malpractice case. He got an immediate reply from the expert but it was addressed to the expert's old friend the defendant doctor in the case telling him not to worry ‑ he'd take care of everything! If you hit reply watch out, it's gone ‑ there's no later pulling it out of the mail pouch.

Continue to Page 3