400 Lawyers Get Their Day in Court Learning All the Legal Angles

Chiye Wenkam, 36, a Unocal corporate lawyer four months out of law school who never handles trials, attended Saturday’s seminar because she believes that every lawyer needs to understand the court system even if she never argues a case.

Mike Gunn, 40, an Ontario lawyer for nine years, was there to update himself on civil law and prepare to handle a couple of cases in the Los Angeles County Courthouse.

Laurel Roberts, 40, who has a Ph.D. in instructional techniques and recently graduated from the University of West Los Angeles Law School, enrolled to prepare for the third of the three “unrelated” challenges she believes all new lawyers face: graduate, pass the Bar and practice law.

Robert Ryan, Michael Baker and Steve Maslauski, three 26-year-old Pepperdine University School of Law classmates, were assigned to the seminar by their law firms. The firms paid their $25 fees as a cheap way to teach them the courtroom ropes that nobody learns in law school.

New or Seasoned

The six lawyers were among nearly 400 new or seasoned attorneys who spent Saturday morning in a “walk-through” seminar on the Los Angeles County Superior Court’s civil pre-trial motion system. It was conducted by the six judges and court commissioner who handle such motions daily on the courthouse’s eighth floor.

Maslauski had already argued three or four cases along the marbled hallway for his firm of Girardi, Keese & Crane, but wanted more information so that all he has to worry about next time he’s in court is his legal arguments.

“The firm doesn’t trust me a lot on the eighth floor yet. That’s why I’m here,” Maslauski said candidly. “No senior partner really trusts a junior on the eighth floor, and if he does, he doesn’t know what he is doing. A young attorney just doesn’t know that much. That may seem hard to believe, but so much of law school is theory and learning to think like a lawyer, not learning the law. I’m here to learn the law.”

The seminar was the second on pre-trial motions in a 6-year-old program that has concentrated on “walk-throughs” of civil jury trials. The program will add its first how-to for criminal courts Dec. 7. Superior Court Judge Jack A. Crickard initiated the program after he watched his own son’s bewilderment with the courts when the youth became a lawyer.

Over the Centuries

“It was just such a simple idea,” Crickard said. “We wanted to teach new lawyers the customs in the courtroom developed over the centuries so they will be more comfortable. We teach them simple things like don’t stand between your witness and the jury.”

After Crickard described his program in the American Bar Assn. Journal in 1981, he received an American Judicature Society merit citation and 600 inquiries from across the country. He shipped packets of material to anyone interested, and similar programs were cloned in Florida, Texas and Indiana.

Locally, judges volunteer, or are persuaded by Crickard, to turn their courtrooms into classrooms for the thrice-annual seminars.

Saturday’s “teachers”--Judges Norman L. Epstein, Charles E. Jones, Warren H. Deering, Robert H. O’Brien, Irving A. Shimer and John L. Cole and Commissioner John Zebrowski--received no pay or compensatory time off for giving up their golf and tennis games. Legal secretaries volunteered to register the student lawyers and serve doughnuts and coffee.

Investment in Time

“It’s an investment in saving time for the court. If lawyers know what they are doing, then we can work faster,” Crickard said. “And it’s a wonderful public relations tool for judges. We get across our concern with the competency of lawyers.”

The $25 registration fee, often paid by new lawyers’ firms, is used for printed materials and the coffee and doughnuts. If anything is left, it’s used to enhance the courthouse judges’ lounge.

About 85% of the 400 to 500 lawyers who attend each seminar are new to their profession. The others, like Gunn, seek information to handle a specific case or brush up on forgotten techniques. As the only such program in the state, the “walk-throughs” attract attorneys from San Francisco, Sacramento, Orange and San Bernardino counties as well as from Los Angeles.

Some Pointers

What the attorneys get for their $25 and about three hours is no-nonsense advice like that Saturday from Shimer, who lectured from behind his counsel table, robeless and in shirtsleeves:

- “Read the signs. There is a sign that says ‘moving party’ and a sign that says ‘responding party.’ Know which one you are and stand in the right place.

- “Read the list outside the courtroom. I’ve seen people sit until 11 o’clock, then ask why I didn’t call their case when it had been listed as assigned to a nearby court, and by then was already disposed of. Then the lawyer has to file a motion for reconsideration on the grounds that he was an idiot.

- “Read our tentative decisions. When we prepare this for you, not to take advantage of it is an act of stupidity.

- “Read the judge. Don’t go to sleep out there. Don’t tune out. Listen.

- “Stand or sit? I don’t care. I will talk to lawyers if you are standing on your head as long as you listen to me. I control the courtroom. But some judges want you to stand, so the better course is to stand.

- “Know when to shut up. Seventy-five percent of the cases we handle are slamdunks one way or the other. Know when the hearing is over and done with.”

Most evaluation forms submitted Saturday pronounced the judges’ performances “excellent” or at least “good.” Roberts called the morning “very helpful, informative, very good.” Baker considered it a “good overview” and Ryan thought the program “very efficient.”

But will what the young lawyers learned make Maslauski’s senior partners place more confidence in his ability to handle law and motion cases?

“Well,” Maslauski said with a hopeful grin, “it won’t hurt me.”