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October 2004
The Role of Lawyers
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Kelly Frels
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Tort reform efforts and media coverage of celebrity trials, in combination
with portrayals of lawyers in movies and the mass media, have continued
to focus attention on lawyers. While some of the coverage has been directed
at personal injury lawyers, criticisms have been leveled at all lawyers.
These comments, which will surely intensify this fall with a trial lawyer
as a vice presidential candidate, have not gone unnoticed by Texas lawyers.
The public and lawyers alike should not be surprised that lawyers continue
to remain in the spotlight. When there is debate concerning the Constitution
and laws, lawyers necessarily will be involved; indeed, 34 of 55 delegates
to the United States Constitutional Convention were lawyers. Twenty-five
of the 43 presidents of the United States have been lawyers.
I am a trial lawyer and have been since I passed the bar in 1970. My first
case was as a plaintiff’s lawyer on behalf of a Houston construction
company to collect an account from a customer. During my career, I have
sued on behalf of clients, and I have defended clients who have been sued.
Most of my practice has been representing school districts, colleges, and
universities. In our constitutional system, based on the rule of law, the
courts are the means by which we resolve disputes. As legal ethics scholar
Monroe Freedman wrote in his book Understanding Lawyer’s Ethics,
“Society, through the legal system, channels people’s grievances
into socially controlled, non-violent means of dispute resolution. We —
the lawyers — play an indispensable part in that constructive social
process.” In short, Americans do not settle matters through duels
or threats of terror in our justice system.
In the debates on tort reform, some have found it politically expedient
to engage in name calling and other tactics to appeal to voters by targeting
certain groups of lawyers who they feel are the cause of an out-of-balance
civil justice system. In these campaigns, groups have broadly criticized
“trial lawyers” and “plaintiffs’ lawyers”
without much, if any, attempt to inform the audience of specific lawyers
of whom they complain. By inference, they have lumped all lawyers together
as a “sullen, sneering, scornful bunch,” in the words of one
involved in the Texas political process. Likewise, the small number of lawyers
to whom this description might apply are not identified and exposed to professional
scrutiny.
What we, as lawyers, should ask in these debates is that each person listen
critically to the complaints about lawyers and be discriminating in making
judgments. We should also request that each person ask family members and
friends to be thoughtful in their analysis. We must remember that the system
of justice we all cherish is based upon the rule of our constitutional laws
and that, for this system to work, citizens must have plaintiff and defense
lawyers representing parties through the judicial system.
I am proud to be a lawyer, and I value the work lawyers do in our society.
Lawyers do much good — as they did at our nation’s Constitutional
Convention and in leading our country. When one examines major community
projects across this state and our country, lawyers will be found on the
front lines.
Next month I will encourage you to vote for the referendum on changes to
the Texas Disciplinary Rules of Professional Conduct that affect referral
fees and advertising rules. In December, I will return to what we as lawyers
can do to provide the other side of the story on lawyer and judicial criticisms
such as the McDonald’s and Dripping Springs mold cases.
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