In response to Kit (aka Peregrinus)

I am proud of you, Kit. I have told my students at Trial Lawyers College—where we teach practicing people’s lawyers how to be real, how to win by caring, how to be honest in the presentation of themselves—that if they take care of their clients, no matter how meager the compensation, that the money aspect of the practice will eventually take care of itself. That is a promise.

Defrauding our nation’s lawyers

Most trial lawyers have been defrauded of their education.

On the average it costs more than $100,000 to get through law school. And after four years in undergrad and three more years in law school, the law school graduate doesn’t know enough to pass the Multi-state Bar and has to spend another $5000 or more to prepare for that. Even then many will fail the bar, some more than once.

The bar exam itself is a fraud. The exam does not help the law profession to determine those who will fight for people, who are honest and who have courage—the most fundamental requirements of a lawyer for the people. The bar exam only tests the applicants ability to play their mostly silly word games.

So we have law schools claiming they are educating lawyers when most lawyers, as they drag themselves out of the misery and boredom of those three empty years, are tragically unprepared to do anything useful. I have often said that for an assistant to help me in a trial I would rather have a nurse than most lawyers fresh out of law school.

The nurse has been trained to listen to the patient. Lawyers know little about listening. The nurse chose her profession because she cares about people. Lawyers are not taught to care. They are engorged with the rare niceties of legal gymnastics often taught by ponderous-headed professors who have never looked into the painful eyes of a client and who have never tried a single jury trial for a human being. If a student complains that a case he or she is studying does not render justice, the professor is quick to retort, “We do not teach justice here, Mr. Jones. We teach the law.”

I could teach an eighth-grader in twenty minutes how to brief a case. Yet for all three years in most law schools the casebook method of learning the law is still in. The matriculating young lawyer is as qualified to represent a client with the education he has suffered through as a doctor who has never seen a patient, who has never held a scalpel in his hand and who learns surgery by having read text books about it and becomes skilled in surgery, if ever, after having stacked up piles of corpses who represent his pathetic learning process.

“The trial of a case, in its simplest form, is telling a story jurors can understand. Yet most lawyers are taught little, if anything, about communicating with others.”

The trial of a case, in its simplest form, is telling a story jurors can understand.  Yet most lawyers are taught little, if anything, about communicating with others.  They are taught to deny their feelings and, at last, have so long shielded themselves against their feelings for that many find it nearly impossible to get in touch with them. Yet justice is a feeling and jurors (as do we all) make their decisions based on their feelings.

Most lawyers know little about classical literature and history, have never written a poem, have never painted a picture, have never stood before an audience and sung a song, have never been permitted to confess their pain or their love, and, in short, have been denied the stuff of personhood.  One need not write poetry or paint pictures to be a successful human being.  But some intimacy with the arts and the language and its use and with right brain functions of feeling and creativity are essential to the development of the whole person.  Little wonder that lawyers, disabled by all of the stifling, mostly useless mental exercises they have suffered, have trouble relating to jurors much less to the rest of mankind.

Is it not a miracle that after having been defrauded of their education at the hands of the entrenched in our law schools that American lawyers haven taken on the fraudulent mindset of their educators who have defrauded them?
 

More Reading

• Mending Legal Education from Best Practices for Legal Education
• Part-time Law School Blog
• Public Interest Law Institute
• “Let’s Make a Deal! Dickering Down Your Law School Tuition”
• Comments to the above “Let’s Make a Deal! article:
• Comment by Make money not law - July 12, 2008
• Comment by Anonymous – July 13, 2008
• Comment by Ed – July 13, 2008

The voice of silence

This morning I am at the Thunderhead Ranch east of Dubois Wyoming where–along with a volunteer staff of brilliant and talented trial lawyers–we conduct the Trial Lawyers College each summer. It is early. The sun is still in hiding.

The exercise for the day is silence—blessed silence. We met in the loft of the big barn at five o’clock. Once we entered the barn all was silent except for the instructions I gave. We should meet with Mother Nature. Every part of us came from her, and will one day return to her. We should go in silence and listen to her and see what, if anything she has to say to us.

Are we not harassed by noise? Are we not attacked by its pollution? In the cities we cannot escape it, the sound of gasoline engines belching and growling, the vibrations above of airplanes roaring and whining, the incessant chatter of the radio and television that seems to be a requirement for life without which we are lost and lonely. Even in the house the incessant sounds abound, the whir of the refrigerator, the tromping of the family’s feet, the babble of children and the louder babble of their parents—the noise of life. There is no way to escape it.

“I instruct the lawyers, we call them warriors, for these warriors fight for the rights of people against the daunting power of corporations and government…”

I instruct the lawyers, we call them warriors, for these warriors fight for the rights of people against the daunting power of corporations and government—I instruct the warriors to go into the hills that surround the ranch. Find a place that is yours, where you can see no other person—perhaps by one of the huge old rocks discarded by retreating glaciers, or down by the stream. Nothing here will harm you. The wild animals, the deer, the antelope, the coyotes, the moose—they are all friendly. Even the mountain lion is shy and will slip away to avoid the noise of your feet.

When they find their place they should lie down on the earth and listen. Perhaps there will be a message. Perhaps the warrior has something to say to Mother Earth. Perhaps the warrior will ask questions like: What is the history of my life? Who am I? Where have I been all of these years? What roads have I traveled? And, having heard the answers to those questions, perhaps he or she will have a better idea of the road ahead.

Then these lawyers will come in and have a silent breakfast. Not a word will be exchanged among them. And after breakfast they will meet again in the big barn where they will paint. Paint? Lawyers painting? They will be asked to paint who they are, to paint a portrait of their soul. They will find in that exercise something of themselves that most have never encountered. And they will paint in complete silence.

After that we will have a silent lunch and at two in the afternoon we will again meet in the big barn and break the silence. We will share with one another what we have learned. What we have experienced. What it has been like to see the sun come up, to break the darkness. What our conversations with Mother Earth have been. What was revealed to us in our painting.

Already, every morning we meet in the big barn and first off we give time to the warriors to read their poetry to us. Most have never written a poem. Each warrior is required to sing a solo. The warrior mounts an old picnic table and looks down on his fellow warriors. It is frightening—to sing a song like that in public. But we must learn to use the voice, to acquire a comfort in speaking to juries. We must learn the rhythms of poetry in our arguments to the jury. We need to learn the composition of our speech that is found in song and verse. We should better understand who we are in order that we can better know our clients and the judge and jurors, yes, and even our opponents.

We have already been in other exercises that are calculated to help us to become acquainted with the self. We are teaching and learning together. It is a program that lets the warriors experience successful ways to choose their juries, to present the evidence and to make their arguments. It is a new kind of education that lawyers never get in law school—how to be a human being. We believe that if we are to successfully argue to other human beings in a courtroom—to jurors—we must first learn to be human beings ourselves.

I am writing this while the warriors are about their silent tasks I have assigned them. I am thinking about how much courage it takes to participate in those tasks. I am also listening to the stream outside my window. The sun has burst out in its perfect glory. The day is upon us. And silence, as my mother used to tell me, is golden. I have learned much from it.

Have we surrendered too soon?

Some readers have asked that I be more reasonable and in balance. I have replied, “In face of injustice I do not wish to be reasonable or in balance.”

I think of William Lloyd Garrison, the Abolitionist leader on Slavery in America who in 1831 wrote:

“I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject I do not wish to think or speak or write with moderation.

“No! No! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm. Tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of a ravisher. Tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen, but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest—I will not equivocate—I will not excuse. I will not retreat a single inch—and I will be heard.”

As for me, I do not seek to tear down all institutions, although many need to be discarded as evil. I wish to tear down only those that unjustly enslave our people.

I do not believe all corporations are evil. But the corporate form induces evil because it does not attach human responsibility to the corporations’ immense power. Those who govern the corporate machine must be made responsible for the abuse of its unbridled power. Too often its responsibility to those it injures is as if one shoots a bullet into his neighbor and then blames only the gun.

Bill wrote “Many of us cannot see that we are enslaved. Being told that we are in that state is a foreign concept, one that the brain cannot process. It may take a while for the idea to sink in. It would almost be akin to being told that the people you believe to be your parents are not, in fact, your parents.”

I agree. That is the danger. Unless we recognize our servitude we can never escape it.

We have been told from the moment we could understand the words that there is “liberty and justice for all.” We cannot bear to hear that the promise has been broken, that, indeed, the fruit of the promise was never delivered in the first place.

Yet in America the occasional slave can become the slave master. That is the throbbing, luring advertisement of our system. It is possible, as all things are possible, that the poor kid from the projects can become the CEO of Cornflakes and enslave his neighbors.

The term, “slavery” is too broad to be understood. We are enslaved by religion, by our employers, by the bank, by the credit card companies, by our promises to our spouses, by our duty to our children, by a stale belief system imposed on us by parents and teachers.

We are enslaved by our negligence regarding our health, by our inability to think without the aid of our slave masters, the corporation, that teaches us what to buy and how to pay for it. We are enslaved by marketers, who tell us what we must wear and the car we must drive to be hip, by politicians who themselves are enslaved by corporate money who tell us what wars we must fight and that we must, to be loyal Americans, sacrifice the lives or our children and the lives of those our children are directed to kill.

We are enslaved by unjust laws and a judicial system that will not deliver justice. We are enslaved….I am already weary and I have only begun this bill of particulars.

Slavery is of two types—that which is imposed on us by outside forces over which we have no control, and that which is self imposed. In the end, much of the slavery we suffer has been a matter of choice. Is it not more comfortable to be a slave?

The truth is I have told you nothing you do not already know. Already you know that perfect freedom is perfect nothingness. To approach it is pure terror. We call it death.

We conduct the war against our own enslavement from within. Our freedoms are the spoils of that carnage. Freedom cannot be given except as we capture it in ourselves. May I ask: Do we surrender too soon?

In response to Daniel Q

I do not try as many criminal defense cases as civil cases for the injured.

I tried many criminal cases as a young prosecutor, and I am not proud of the fact that I never lost one that went to trial. Could I have been right that many times? I once convicted a man of first degree murder with the death penalty attached after which I pled to the Wyoming Supreme Court to reduce the charge, and the court did.

It is usually not hard to win your cases as a prosecutor–usually. You have the evidence, the investigators, the leaning of ordinary citizens toward your side of the case.

Winning as a defense attorney is another thing. Some public defenders try in a single year as many cases for persons charged with serious crimes as I try in ten years. I know a public defender who has seven hundred cases to watch over and who tries scores of cases each year.

This system is terribly broken because public defenders are often, more often than we know, not provided the time to prepare and the resources to launch a competent defense. These lawyers, hated by some, fight on with little pay and are the true heroes of the profession.

When many years ago I saw the light and refused to take on any cases on behalf of corporations or to longer represent the state as a prosecutor, or otherwise, I began to take criminal defense cases that appealed to me. They were usually seen as losers by those who claimed know, but I could give myself the time and the money to properly prepare and present these cases.

I have just finished the defense of Geoffrey Fieger in Detroit, a case I worked on for more than two years, one in which I had all of the resources necessary to make a competent defense. Mr. Fieger was acquitted on all ten counts.

But in the Imelda Marcos case, one that lasted more than three months, I had only three weeks to prepare. This, was an anomaly.

I have tried many other jury cases, including murder cases (written about in two of my books, Gunning for Justice and The Smoking Gun) but I had the time and the assets to properly prepare. Preparation and passion are the key to winning, always. Always.

When lawyers compare their own records to mine and ask questions, they are being unkind to themselves, because most criminal defense lawyers have dockets with too many cases. It takes a lot of criminal cases to provide the income necessary to survive in this field. Most criminal defense lawyers would love to have the time to prepare their cases that I have had in most of mine.

I do recall having pled one of my clients in the middle of a trial when the US Attorney offered a deal no one could refuse–no jail time and a smile. But that has not been my M.O.

Thanks for your question.

The pain of chains

The dearth of responses to our discussion of freedom suggests in part why we are not free. The subject is painful. We are not a pain-seeking species. We want relief from the pain of slavery, but we cannot tolerate more pain in seeking our freedom. It is less painful to sit quietly in our chains.

I have written on the subject in three published books: Give Me Liberty, From Freedom to Slavery, and Seven Simple Steps to Personal Freedom. It must be clear to you that my own sense of enslavement has driven me to consider this issue over and over again. And here I am beginning my blog with this subject as if I cannot leave it for fresher fields.

Yet black slavery was tolerated in this nation for over two hundred years. Two hundred years! How long must we endure ours? And the horrors of that slavery that laid at the foundation of our nation still infects us with its unrelenting misery and hatred.

I had thought that together we might discover new insights. I would welcome yours. But we are not eager to pound against our chains hoping to break them—the pain. And I understand.

I should be writing about growing old, for that is an issue I need to explore with you as well. It is a different kind of servitude–one to Mother Nature who continually replaces us with mutations more likely to survive her tantrums.

The first step toward freedom

The man who sleeps under the bridge enjoys a certain freedom. The stag in the forest is also free. The first is free to starve and to die of exposure, the second to become a trophy on the hunter’s wall. The man with a family has lost the freedom of a bachelor who, in his single state, is free to suffer loneliness and perhaps a life without direction.

The worker has sold his freedom to his dead employer, the corporation that was never alive, but he can buy frozen dinners, a TV set and mortgage his future wages for his new SUV and a tract house that will own him. He is free to leave his employment and seek a more fulfilling job, but the new job will likely be as stifling as the old. The worker is free to vote for anyone he chooses. But his choices were sold out to the dead before he entered the voting booth.

Fathers and mothers are free to scrimp, sacrifice and save in order to send their children to college. Once qualified, the children will be sold to another dead corporate master in another city where their choices are substantially the same. None of us, not the homeless, the stag, the well employed, the mothers and fathers, the CEOs of the dead who are only the overseers of slaves—none of us are free.

The good news comes when we recognize our state as slaves. For recognition of that truth will permit us to take the first steps toward our personal freedom. Be patient with me. We cannot find our way out of the jungle until we recognize we are lost. There are many ways out. We shall find them together.

The way out

So we all want solutions—solutions that will free us. Solutions come in easy words. Give us easy words, Gerry, words that do not anger or frighten or hurt. We want words we can pass quickly by and then pop a Bud. We do not want words that cause us to pry open the thick door to the inner self—to the deep places where our status as a slave will be revealed.

We do not want our friends to say we are slaves. That word is too damning, too frightening, too unkind. Friends like you, Gerry would not say this word. No. Not a friend.

But if we seek change we must be prepared to abandon easy words. When we have searched the width and breadth of our slavery, when we struggle against the psychic chains and wince at the invisible lash at our backs then the pain will lead us to solutions.

What do I mean by our slavery?

I mean that state in which the person has no effective control over the course of his or her life.

Surely that is neither you nor me. Surely.

I mean, if no matter how he struggles, no matter how she labors at the task, if neither cannot explore their boundless uniqueness they are enslaved.

I mean, if he has lost his only power, the power of the self, he is enslaved. And if her passion for life is encaged by duty and the expectations of others, she is not free.

But surely this is neither you nor me. Surely.

To all of you who have shared your comments:

This is an exploding new experience for me. It is as if I have been wandering around in this forest looking for my tribe, and suddenly I have found you. There you are. I am seeing you, and speaking to you, and you to me, and it is a magic that leaves an old man weak. Thank you for your caring revealed by your comments. I have often said that caring is contagious.

I don’t know what to do. I am reading comments that startle me—that is to say they are intelligent, and insightful beyond expectation—some should be writing this blog rather than I. I marvel at the collective insights. Look for yourselves at the responses I have just received.

But there is not enough of me to respond to each of you. And I worry that if I respond to just a few then others, those equally inviting, will feel left out—sort of like the middle child who is loved but gets overlooked. So I don’t know what to do.