Lawyer, 86, Understands About Lawyers and the Aged

“How long you been on the sheet?” David Sokol asks.

“Uh, almost five years,” I answer, temporarily stumped by the colloquialism for newspaper that I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say aloud.

“Have you been with other sheets?” he followed up. I felt like I was talking to Bogart.

Sokol walks with a cane, needs a hearing aid and, besides that, says his eyes are going. But what the hell, retiring might be worse.

“It’s inactivity that kills you,” he says. He has a case now involving a family property squabble, and he says it’s a hot one. “I like the courtroom. I josh with the judge and everybody, and I forget all the aches and pains. If you’re alone, oh boy, it’s arthritis, and this and that.”

It would make great reading to pass on tales from someone who sat around in the 1920s listening to John Barrymore and his circle of arts and letters friends discuss philosophy late into the night in Hollywood cafes. Or to hear a little about Upton Sinclair, the social reformer for whom Sokol once handled legal work.

But that wasn’t why I went down to South Laguna to meet Sokol. It was to sound him out about legal protections for the aged, in light of recent Times disclosures that Orange County attorney James Gunderson became the recipient of millions of dollars from the estates of senior citizens whose wills he prepared.

Sokol may have a better grasp of the subject than most because, for one thing, he’s a lawyer, and for another, he’s 86 years old.

Raising the subject was all it took to darken Sokol’s mood.

“I’m insulted,” Sokol said of Gunderson, who has denied any impropriety. “It’s demeaning to the whole damn profession. I entered the law 65 years ago. I’m perhaps the oldest active member of the bar at this time in California. I entered the law as a profession, not a business. These people today have made it into a business. You know what that means: the big bucks.”

But what if the lawyer becomes, in fact, the trusted friend of the person needing the will?

“We always do,” Sokol said. “A couple weeks ago a charity called me over to this woman and right away, just after meeting me, she wanted to put me in her will. I told her that no lawyer can ethically be in your will.”

Sokol said he has never heard of another attorney being involved in wills to the extent Gunderson apparently has been.

What concerns him much more, he said, is the vulnerability of senior citizens--usually women--to people who ingratiate themselves in a disguised grab for their estates.

“It’s not just the legal profession,” Sokol said. “This town is full of guys who are waiting on older people. They see an older woman, and they carry her bundle, help her. Then they get into the house somehow, and they’re the only ones (with access). The children have followed their corporation to Ohio or someplace, and it’s a calculated deal. This is a big business. I think it’s more serious than the lawyers because lawyers know their duty, generally. At least, they should.”

The troubling part is how easy it is to picture Sokol’s scenario.

“It goes deep,” he said. “We live in an alienated society. Take my case. My children had colleges, everything. My daughter is going East to live. My son lives in Truckee, another one lives in San Diego. So I invite guys over to clean up or something and pay them a little extra. Now, the old lady who can’t do what I do--go to concerts, meeting people--anyone who comes in and shows them the slightest interest. . . . And they know how to get along with them. Sell yourself, and they’re doing it all the time. And how are you going to reach (the problem)?”

Sokol said he knows of one current situation where an elderly landlady has signed over a house and lot worth up to $2 million to a tenant--at the expense of a blood relative who lives elsewhere.

Despite his aches and pains, Sokol knows he’s luckier than most. His mind and speech are still sharp and his world hasn’t closed in around him, as it has for too many other seniors. He sees the flip side when he speaks at a seniors’ function, he said, and some women seem joy-struck by his mere kissing of their hands.

“They crave some attention,” he said. “They’d give me anything I wanted. How are you going to control that?”

Are you saying they’re defenseless prey, I asked.

“No. There should be some way to handle it in a community,” Sokol said. “A decent community can control these guys from marauding, so don’t tell me it can’t be done. It can be done. I’m not in a policy-making position, but a small community like this, if they can’t control a thing like that, something’s wrong with it.”

Given his gift for banter, I probably should have apologized to Sokol for such a dreary conversation.

“It’s a pity,” he said. “They’re so easily hornswoggled.”