Legal Profession’s Skidding Esteem Signals Problems

Nowhere is the decay of such fundamental American precepts as honesty, integrity, accountability, right and wrong more apparent than in the nation’s legal system.

Only 10 years ago, citizens overwhelmingly viewed the practice of law as a profession imbued with high standards of conduct.

Today, two out of three Americans (67 percent) think lawyers are not usually honest or are only sometimes honest.

Only one in four (27 percent) persons thinks lawyers are very honest, or even mostly honest.

Over half (56 percent) believe lawyers use the law and justice system to protect the powerful as a means of enriching themselves.

And only a third (35 percent) believe lawyers play an important role in holding wrongdoers accountable.

It’s not a pretty picture, but that’s the one painted in a new poll by U.S. News & World Report magazine.

And legal officials here tend to agree the poll is probably an accurate reflection of the public perception. Though they do think the public is misinformed and the press is part of the problem.

Some also point out the news media (plus accountants, stock brokers and others) have their own image and credibility problems.

All agree the basest instincts of both the news media and the legal fraternity are on trial along with O.J. Simpson.

In a cover story on “How Lawyers Abuse the Law,” the current issue of U.S. News & World Report observes that attorneys are the butt of the most vile jokes in America today. The magazine quotes American Bar Association President George Bushnell as saying, “I think lawyer jokes are funny.”

Likewise.

But others are so angry about the failure of justice in America that they don’t see the humor.

So, difficult as it is, this column will abstain from repeating several knee-slappers.

While not disputing the magazine poll’s accuracy as to the public perception, Spokane barrister Patrick Connelly says, “I think lawyers are the most honest people I know.”

Now, to me, that is frightening.

On the other hand, as Connelly sees it, the news media seize on the actions of a few bad apples. And that I cannot deny.

“I’d like,” said the president of the Spokane County Bar Association, “to see more articles about the good things lawyers do.”

Confesses colleague Bill Etter, “I would be naive and less than candid if I didn’t concede the esteem of the profession has been going downhill.

“The good things involving attorneys we don’t hear much about,” says the immediate past president of the Spokane County Bar Association. “The notoriety goes to those of mediocre talent who maximize use of the media to talk trash and become successful in that way.

“This, of course, leads to disrespect for attorneys,” says Etter, “and we can’t blame that on the public.”

Etter expressed concern about the carnival atmosphere of the Simpson trial and the embarrassing antics of a Spokane lawyer who reveled in making a spectacle of himself recently for the publicity value.

But Etter said he’d still bet that most people think their own lawyer is honest. “In a profession which deals daily with adversarial conflict,” he observed, “it’s probably not surprising that many people think other people’s lawyers are shysters.”

Good point.

Paul D. Fitzpatrick, member of the State Supreme Court-State Bar Association’s Joint Task Force on Lawyer Discipline, concurs. And he points out, there are lawyers and there are lawyers.

“I don’t play the political game well,” he says. “And that’s what a trial has become - political game playing. Many times, it seems, justice has nothing to do with a trial. I am not a trial lawyer.

“I am a planning lawyer,” Fitzpatrick says. “We try to help people do things in ways so they avoid courts.”

But reason doesn’t always win. Some years ago, recalls the Spokane attorney, “Two old guys in Yakima got in a boundary fight over a strip of ground 1 foot wide.”

Unable to persuade the two to settle their differences between themselves, says Fitzpatrick, “My firm spent $10,000 representing just one of them in court. The judge split the disputed 1 foot down the middle - he gave each of them six inches.

“They could have gone to Tokyo and bought land for that price,” says Fitzpatrick, “and they probably both responded to that opinion poll on lawyers that U.S. News & World Report took.”

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