Lawyers Losing the Verdict in the Court of Public Opinion

A Los Angeles lawyer, Raul Palomo Jr., 39, dismissed a client’s case without permission and lied about it, forged another client’s signature on a settlement proposal, and misappropriated $11,250.

A Santa Ana lawyer, Donald R. Powell, 49, collected several fees, including what the California State Bar termed an “unconscionable” $2,000 for a trademark matter, but never did the work.

A Lemoore lawyer, Michael Paul Mason, 48, wrongly entered into business deals with clients, commingled their money with his own, spent their money and drove one client to bankruptcy.

All three lawyers were disbarred.

Low Public Esteem

Small wonder the public thinks so little of lawyers, even though parents often hope their children will join the prestigious, lucrative profession.

Lawyers have suffered a poor image, despite their high status, since Biblical days when Jesus admonished: “Woe unto you, ye lawyers! For ye lade men with burdens grievous to be borne, and ye yourselves touch not the burdens with one of your fingers.” (Luke 11:46).

Five national Gallup polls in the last decade questioning about 1,500 adults about the honesty and ethical standards of various professionals show consistently that more than one-quarter rate lawyers “low” or “very low” while only 4% to 6% rate them “very high.”

Last year a National Law Journal poll of 1,004 adults showed that only 5% felt the “most respect” for lawyers, compared to 30% for clergymen and 28% for doctors. A meager 12% said they would want their children to become lawyers.

And perhaps most painful of all to the legal profession, an 18-month study completed last year by the American Bar Assn. Commission on Professionalism showed that only 6% of corporate legal clients believe lawyers deserve to be called “professionals” and 68% have noticed a decline in professionalism among lawyers. Of state and federal judges interviewed, 55% agreed that professionalism has declined.

‘The Public Is Upset’

“I think lawyers have a lousy image and justifiably so, and the public is upset about them,” said Richard Annotico, a Los Angeles realtor and outspoken representative of the public on the State Bar of California Board of Governors. Annotico graduated from law school but refused to take the Bar examination to become a lawyer.

“Unfortunately the profession has come to be a business or a trade or a skill rather than a profession. . . . Lawyers today are damned greedy, damned mercenary.”

Former State Bar President Orville A. (Jack) Armstrong and other trial lawyers, including Larry R. Feldman, president of the 19,000-member Los Angeles County Bar Assn., believe some “lawyer bashing” is a natural byproduct of the adversary process.

“There are winners and losers, and losers are not happy,” said Armstrong, who believes much of the public criticism is generated by disgruntled clients.

“It is easier to blame lawyers or the system than themselves,” Feldman added. “And of the ‘happy’ ones who win, a good proportion are unhappy because it takes so long, and another proportion are unhappy because they didn’t get what they thought they should. A very small per cent are justifiably unhappy because their lawyers didn’t explain the process, so they don’t understand the justice system and therefore they don’t like it.”

The public also may sense that there are more “bad” lawyers simply because there are more lawyers, and more of them have high profiles in controversial political positions.

“If a program is unsuccessful,” Armstrong said, “people say, ‘Hey, look, another bad lawyer messed up.’ ”

Tod Martin, director of the California State Bar’s Office of Bar Communications and Public Affairs, said the number of complaints filed against lawyers in California has consistently remained about one for every 10 lawyers since the State Bar Court was developed in 1979. The number of lawyers in California has grown from 72,922 in 1981 to an estimated 105,000 today.

California has a particularly high concentration--15% of the nation’s lawyers in a state with 11% of the country’s population.

Comprehensive figures are unavailable on how many lawyers are convicted of crimes, an automatic cause for suspension by the State Bar. But Los Angeles County Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Gilbert Garcetti estimated that his office usually handles two cases a month in a county with 35,000 attorneys. The primary felony involving attorneys, he said, is fraud, and the most common misdemeanor is drunk driving.

Legal historian Robert W. Gordon, a professor of ethics and history at Stanford University School of Law, believes changes in the practice of law have been eroding lawyers’ professionalism for the last 15 years. He defined professionalism as the practice of an occupation requiring theoretical training in a university, consideration of a client’s interest and the public’s general welfare above the practitioner’s own, service rather than profit motives, and self regulation.

“The reputation of lawyers for honesty and forthrightness and good service has never been particularly high in Western culture . . . ,” Gordon said. “On the other hand, one has to look at the prestige of being a lawyer. The paradox is that people fear and distrust lawyers as a group but may still want their kids to go to law school.”

Gordon believes the distrust of lawyers has ballooned and will continue to grow because of the change within “stodgy, torpid” corporate law firms. Traditionally, the firms retained major clients for decades and encouraged senior partners to serve as mentors, schooling new lawyers in ethics and professional behavior.

Firms ‘More Cutthroat’

But today’s firms, he said, are “more competitive, more cutthroat” businesses that scramble for lawyer-shopping, Fortune 500 clients and have “profit as the guiding ethic.”

“Corporate law firms are increasingly sacrificing all other goals of professional life toward the single goal of making as much money as possible,” Gordon said.

“This has been very bad for the profession, and a lot of lawyers are concerned because many believe ethics are sinking rapidly under the stress of competition.”

The legal historian notes that it will take “intensive collective concerted action to make sure that professional values don’t go down the drain.”

Lawyers are mulling and moving toward such action on national, state and local levels.

Non-lawyers and public prosecutors are also trying to make lawyers live up to the lofty professional status they have enjoyed.

Challenges Attorneys

A national consumer protection organization called HALT, for Help Abolish Legal Tyranny, regularly challenges attorneys to curb their fees and to foster rather than inhibit the training of paralegals, who charge considerably smaller fees for routine legal matters.

The organization, which claims 120,000 members, also encourages states to place the regulation of lawyers under publicly accountable consumer protection offices like California’s Department of Consumer Affairs. HALT claims in position papers that the law profession wrongly maintains a “self-regulated monopoly.”

Lawyers themselves have addressed the complaints about their professionalism. The American Bar Assn. focused on the problem more than two years ago by creating the Commission on Professionalism and expanding its Professional Responsibility Hot Line Service. The commission not only established that lawyers, judges and the public believed professionalism is declining, but suggested 27 steps to try to reverse the trend.

The national association can only recommend, not dictate, rules or programs. Lawyers are governed by state law and, in 33 states, by state Bar organizations to which every lawyer must belong in order to practice.

A successor Special Coordinating Committee on Professionalism now headed by Phoenix lawyer Mark I. Harrison is overseeing the work on the 27 suggested improvements.

Strengthening Ethics

The recommendations include urging law schools to strengthen ethics courses, making six to eight films on ethics to be viewed by every lawyer in the country, reporting colleagues’ misconduct to disciplinary bodies, establishing mandatory continuing legal education programs for practicing attorneys, encouraging written fee agreements for attorneys and clients, assuring merit selection of judges, increasing pro bono or unpaid legal work by lawyers, and “resist(ing) the temptation to make the acquisition of wealth a primary goal of law practice.”

Jill Nicholson, staff counsel to the ABA committee on professionalism, recently asked state and major local Bar groups for ideas for upgrading professionalism. Two states, Georgia and Illinois, she said, set up their own commissions to make specific recommendations. The Illinois State Bar came up with 38 proposals reflecting the national commission’s 27 and including a major push for merit selection of judges.

Some local associations, Nicholson said, have developed “codes of professional courtesy” to supplement the ABA’s Model Rules for Professional Conduct. The codes urge lawyers to take a simple approach like calling an opponent and agreeing on a postponement rather than fighting over it in court, a type of professional behavior touted by Los Angeles’ Feldman.

“You should do that just because that is a civilized and the least costly basis for doing it,” Feldman said.

Lawyers and judges eager to promote professionalism agree on three major approaches--supporting and strengthening attorney discipline so that “bad” colleagues are punished, educating lawyers as to ethics as well as procedures and the law itself, and educating the news media and the public about the legal system and lawyers’ roles.

Offers Hot Line Service

As part of the education process, the ABA (as do many state and local Bar groups) offers a “hot line” to attorneys who simply do not know what the model rules of conduct require on questions of conflict of interest, retaining client files, or whether an advertisement oversteps restrictions, and to disgruntled clients who want to know whether their complaints are worth taking to a state disciplinary board.

George Kuhlman, ethics counsel and associate director of the ABA Professional Responsibility Hot Line Service, said the Chicago-based ethics lawyers research about 300 questions each month, 95% of them from attorneys and the remainder from their clients.

He said the questions range from whether a certain kind of advertising or marketing of legal services is ethical, to how long an attorney should keep a client’s inactive files, to whether certain information about a client (that he plans to kidnap his own child, for example) should be released or kept confidential.

Kuhlman also assists the ABA Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility, which updated the organization’s Model Rules of Professional Conduct in 1983. The new version has been adopted by 23 states, excluding California which has its own slightly different rules.

“We want people to realize that . . . ethical standards are an important priority to the profession,” Kuhlman said. “By publicizing standards, we help and encourage the public to hold lawyers accountable.”

No Need for Commission

At the state level, former Bar President Armstrong said California had no need for a mini-commission on professionalism because the State Bar already was working to make lawyers better professionals. Goals include streamlining and strengthening the beleaguered attorney discipline system, and showing the public a positive image.

Armstrong said he is optimistic that the state will enact his proposed mandatory continuing legal education proposal requiring practicing lawyers to attend classes periodically. Twenty-seven other states now have mandatory programs, but California’s courses have remained voluntary.

Martin, the State Bar’s communications director, said a $40,000 study of how best to meet the public’s education needs about the legal system is expected to help his office foster a more positive image of the profession.

To aid lawyers, the State Bar operates an ethics hot line that attorneys can consult about specific rules of professional conduct, and maintains a committee on professional responsibility and conduct that updates the rules and issues opinions on frequently asked questions.

When clients or, occasionally, attorneys file complaints about lawyers who break or bend the state rules, the State Bar’s disciplinary section investigates and recommends disbarment or suspension to the Supreme Court. The discipline arm, often criticized by the state Legislature in recent years, accounts for $17.9 million or two-thirds of the State Bar’s $26.8-million budget. The money is obtained primarily from mandatory attorneys’ dues, which are pegged at $275 for veteran lawyers in 1988.

No Specific Program

Feldman, Los Angeles County Bar Assn. president, said the decline in professionalism must be addressed on three fronts--in law schools, law firms and through individual lawyer contacts with clients. But he has not yet settled on a specific program for the county Bar Assn.

Feldman’s predecessor as president, Donald P. Baker, established a one-year Public and Profession Committee, headed by Prof. Daniel P. Selmi of the Loyola University School of Law. Asked what would be implemented from its, Feldman snapped, “That committee did nothing.”

Selmi said his group came up with two ideas--provide more information about the legal system to prospective jurors and to news media--but made no formal report.

He said the committee did not go any further because it is difficult to get a group of independent, articulate lawyers to agree on much.

“We certainly were not able to come up with a consensus of what to do. I don’t think that can be done,” said Selmi, a professor of torts and environmental law. “I ended up frustrated with it.”

Best Done at Home

Selmi joined others in suggesting that upgrading professionalism is best done at home--by individual lawyers.

“The best thing they can do is probably to use a little common sense in explaining what they are doing and why they are doing it, especially to their clients,” he said.

“Many say that if lawyers just clean up their own act and be the best they can, the image will take care of itself. I think that is true,” added Nicholson, who practiced family law before joining the ABA staff.

“I have always thought,” said the State Bar’s Armstrong, “that professionalism is just being a good lawyer--somebody who follows the rules of conduct, is honest, trustworthy and respects the client and treats the client well, and who has legal knowledge and gets good results.”

LAWYERS: HOW HONEST? Groups of about 1,500 adults nationwide were asked this question: How would you rate the honesty and ethical standards of lawyers--very high, high, average, low, or very low?

Responses 1976 1977 1981 1983 1985 Very high 6% 5% 4% 5% 6% High 19% 22% 20% 19% 21% Average 48% 45% 41% 43% 40% Low 19% 19% 19% 18% 21% Very Low 8% 9% 8% 9% 9% Don’t know -- -- 7% 6% 3%

Source: Gallup Organization