There is a Chinese curse: “May you live in interesting times.” Well, I am confident my term as President of OAJ will be one of “interesting times.”
As Reggie Whitten has often reminded us, the general reputation of lawyers has not been good of late. As this is written, I have fresh on my mind newspaper headlines of criminal charges against a lawyer for misappropriation of client funds and a recent headline complaining that a prominent political lawyer drafted a will that favored another prominent politician in the estate of a wealthy widow. Never mind whether those charges have substance as the damage is in the original headline, not the latter end of the story that the lawyer did nothing wrong.
Then we have the political situation. The Republican party, led by people who have made it a major part of their platform to dismantle the civil justice system, has a majority in both houses of the legislature. Based on the number of contested races and those who will be elected without a race, it is a certainty that will not change.
As this is written, there is a real horse race taking place to see whether the Governor’s office will be controlled by the opposite party from the Legislature, thus giving us some hope of being able to control what awful things come out of the Legislature and become law. You can be sure, however, that the forces of the dark side will make a strong effort at capping damage recoveries and attorney fees and making it difficult to nearly impossible for injured people to hire lawyers who will seek redress for their grievances.
Lest this appear to be all gloom and doom, let me say that I have been doing this sort of work for a long time. (It will soon be 50 years.) Throughout that time, I cannot recall a time when there was not some threat to the legal system.
What I first recall as a threat to the legal system was a thing called “no fault.” Its advocates said it would reduce the cost of car insurance by seeing to it that a greater part of each premium dollar actually went to pay for claims and not to those rascally lawyers. Most states (but not Oklahoma) adopted no fault schemes.
The result was not (as advocates predicted) lowered insurance premiums. Instead, premiums increased in those states that enacted the most draconian no fault schemes. The push for those no fault schemes came and went, replaced by the present push for “tort reform.”
I suspect that the present tort reform push will not be a “practice-ender” for us all. However, we are in for some tough sledding if we do not protect our civil justice system.
Reggie has done an excellent job of building OAJ to protect the justice system and our way of life. I plan to continue the programs he implemented and, hopefully, turn the organization over at the end of my term in as good a condition as I found it.
We need to continue to do the things that Reggie has initiated. We need to increase our membership asthere is strength in numbers. We need to encourage our members to become more active in urging our legislators (even those not normally friendly to us) to do the right thing.
We need to continue to police our ranks in order to avoid the sorts of problems that have been giving us bad press. We need to continue to help our members to do a better job of what they do best – protect peoples’ rights. We do this through a vibrant CLE program, availability of briefs and legal research results on the list serve and, in general, having older, more experienced members available to mentor younger members.
Lawyers need to continue to do good things in our community. And when we do, we need to see to it that the community at large knows about it. I participate actively in an organization called Oklahoma Lawyers for Children. That organization provides counsel for children claimed to be abused or neglected and keeps their interests from being submerged in the legal fights going on around them. Additionally, Legal Aid always needs volunteers with the sort of litigation skills our members possess in abundance.
Please join me in helping to make this a banner year for the trial lawyer!