Those Unlovable Lawyers

The American Bar Assn., meeting in Toronto, has just authorized its leaders to put together a public-relations campaign to improve the image of lawyers. This idea has such comic possibilities that it may well overshadow all the annual meeting’s more important accomplishments, including the passage of resolutions urging lawyers to ensure that capital punishment is color-blind, to boycott discriminatory clubs and to contribute at least 50 hours a year to public service.

The mind reels at the PR possibilities that are open to lawyers: televised testimonials from corporations that have escaped consumers’ lawsuits through timely bankruptcies; full-page newspaper displays for clever mouthpieces who help notorious criminals go free; radio promotions touting the lawyers who negotiate stratospheric annual salaries for 19-year-old pitchers; multimedia campaigns to prove that attorneys really are lovable--not like those piranhas on “L.A. Law.”

In fact, lawyers aren’t lovable and never will be as long as the United States embraces an adversary system of justice. Americans turn to lawyers when they’re mad as hell or frightened to death. Who wants to be represented by someone lovable when you’re gearing up for battle?

The State Bar of California, which recommended the ABA’s public-relations drive, was motivated by concern over the $43 million that the insurance industry is spending for ballot initiatives that would limit attorneys’ fees and impose a system of no-fault auto insurance. The Bar’s fears are understandable; lawyers cannot match the insurers’ spending. But if lawyers really want to improve their public image they might concentrate on ridding their profession of bad apples, finding new ways to resolve controversies out of court and undertaking more pro bono work. But forget the PR campaign: One of the few professions with even less credibility than law is public relations.