Dean's Address

Many of you don't have websites. Many who have them don't have them up‑dated every few months so the search engines don't dump you for lack of activity. Some don't have Email and many who have it don't use it regularly.

Many of you have an active website, now we are all going to be hyperlinked in the new Academy website! Any of us can easily do a search and find out things about each other that we would not mention in polite conversation. Pick a geographical area and do a search for an Academy expert in neonatal malpractice or mass torts, find out who is collecting the most recent product or drug litigation in a certain area.

How and where we work and live is about to change more than at any time in our history. We are as a profession ‑ as a society ‑ poised at the brink. The baby boomers are moving into their peak. In just the last century, the population of the world has almost quadrupled, the world economy is growing rapidly, the third world is industrializing and bringing middle‑class standards to billions with a true world economy developing rapidly. This is enhanced and indeed driven by powerful communication technology. There will be unprecedented opportunities and a wealth of high quality choices for the savvy people who anticipate these changes instead of dreading them.

If we were to look a decade into the future what are a few of the changes we will be likely to see?

Smart cards are definitely on the horizon. These will be portable, credit‑card size data storage and retrieval systems capable of interacting with the digital world concerning financial and medical information, insurance, travel preferences and so on. This will be akin to having a private secretary and accountant on duty 24 hours a day. There will be portable "smart" phones that combine the best features of your cell phone with the PalmPilot featuring voice activation and video capability "Blue Tooth" wireless technology will develop far beyond its present vision. Wireless chips will be everywhere, interacting with other chips automatically. There will be hidden "smart" stationary computers in homes, airports, hotel, office buildings and courthouses that will automatically interact with your own portable devices without prompting. As you walk off the plane, the PalmPilot/phone senses the other chip, turns itself on automatically, downloads your emails and receives incoming. At home these chips will communicate with each other, collecting data on needed repairs before costly breakdowns, making shopping lists for automatic shopping on line. The Internet will be video driven, facilitating ever more rich levels of human interaction.

Many of us have a fear that our society's creation, this technological Frankenstein's "monster", will surpass us ‑ make us useless ‑ make us passe ‑ leave us behind. There is also a fear that as each younger person becomes more natural and one with technology ‑ we as a society of lawyers will lose the culture of professionalism ‑ of personal commerce of accomplishment by humanistic interaction.

Bridging this era of incredible change is our generation of trial lawyers. The Academy is international in nature and scope, diverse in mind and culture, peopled with accomplished warriors from all fields of justice. We know the system better than most it ‑ we use it ‑ we respect it‑ we understand it and hope for its future. However ‑ we are also responsible for its future. We need to get involved with this change, guide it, moderate it and ensure that it enhances our system of justice and professionalism. In the words of one of the most distinguished American jurists, Justice Learned Hand:

"We accept the verdict of the past until the need for change cries out loudly enough to force upon us a choice between the comforts of further inertia and the irksomeness of action."

We are at a pivotal point in history. We need to teach our children and grandchildren the things we took for granted in a less complicated world. We need to make ourselves available to mentor young lawyers, in our offices, in local trial bar groups and throughout the world. We need to teach them how to use what this brave new world has to offer and meld it with what has made our advocacy great ‑ so they never lose sight of the essential humanity of the process. We must use our skills and our position of leadership in the community as a bully pulpit to educate the public about what the advocacy system of justice has wrought and will accomplish in the future ‑ a future that may yet see it torn asunder by the politics of big money, big business and the Far Right (President Bush wants Patient's Rights he says ‑ his idea of " rights" is ‑ you have no right to sue!).

The post modern world is intrinsically tied to the universal use of the digital computer. Whether one is morphing illustrations for use in court, researching complex medical issues or sending rocket probes into space, all of this involves instantaneous communication and information retrieval among people everywhere. The world has shrunk, shrinkwrapped in an electronic membrane. Only a click separates us from people across the globe. This communication revolution is fast rendering national boundaries and other geographical notions obsolete. The Academy has responsibilities that are not just local but international in scope. We need to continue and expand our extraordinary efforts to mediate and give aid to emerging or changing systems. In the past, the Academy had a very productive program working with the ABA when the emerging Eastern Bloc countries asked for help developing new systems of law and justice. Our friends and Fellows of the Academy, George Bizos, Ditkang Moseneke and Ish Semenea have asked us to help them further develop the jury system in South Africa. We are looking into how we can best be of aid to them.

Our most cherished accomplishment as an organization is our six year old, developing relationship with our good friends in China. Through the remarkable efforts of Ray and Audrey Tam, and with the extremely generous help of the Academy Foundation and our friends at Phillips Petroleum, we have had an opportunity to learn and exchange ideas with one of the most interesting and populous nations on earth. We have developed a wonderful dialogue and on going legal interaction with the people of China, whose forefathers established an extraordinary civilization long before the West had even entered the Dark Ages. Through this project we have found a way to express our love and respect for the rule of law by sharing our own systems and experience as China undertakes a massive effort to innovate and evolve its own legal and legislative infrastructure. This is the perfect example of seizing opportunities presented by an ever shrinking and interactive world, in this case, to be at the nadir of China's international metamorphosis. In exposing young Chinese lawyers to our version of the rule of law we reveal it anew to ourselves. In their interest, in their questions, indeed, in their challenges ‑ we renew cherished principals we have come to take for granted.

In closing I would leave you with these thoughts:

Take time in the midst of the pressure and pace of a new world filled with electronic marvels ‑ Turn off your cell phone more often. Seek out more opportunity to stop and enjoy your family and your practice. Remember to give yourself opportunity for strategy and yes ‑ even meditation.

Give of your rich knowledge, wisdom and experience to the young people of today, at home and at work, in and out of the trial bar. Help assure, as we become more and more a technological world, that we do not lose any of the essential elements of humanity that have made us successful as trial lawyers and allowed us to accomplish so much for society.

Speak out to the widest possible community about the accomplishments of and the need for a healthy continuing system of jury advocacy in this and other countries.

Become ever more involved in the Academy's fascinating interaction with one of the most important nations in the world today. The social, professional and personal dividends from the Academy's China experience far outweigh the modest investment of time and energy involved.

Finally, for those, like myself, who admit to some trepidation about the burgeoning array of bewildering new technology, accept that these changes are inevitable. Do not fear, but try to embrace this new world. It is just equipment, learn it, use it ‑ then turn it off. Make it work for you, not own you ‑ your practice ‑or your life.

Remember that Robert F. Kennedy said: "Just because we cannot see clearly the end of the road, that is no reason for not setting out on the essential journey. On the contrary, great change dominates the world, and unless we move with change we will become its victims."

THANK YOU