Misbehaving lawyers need lessons, conference deems
Lawyers congregate to find ways to encourage professionalism.
By JIM ROSS
Published February 25, 2007
OCALA - A lawyer begs for a delay in his client's trial. I haven't had a vacation in five years, he tells the judge. Okay, motion granted.
Months later, the lawyer wants his client's charges dismissed. After all, the trial didn't start within the deadline set out in the law.
A lawyer berates opposing counsel. Go back to Puerto Rico, he tells her. Go back to law school, she replies. He sticks out his tongue during a deposition.
* * *
Wow. Two more stories about lawyers behaving badly. Surprised?
No one inside the packed Hilton ballroom Friday morning seemed shocked.
And they were all lawyers.
They know that bad things can happen among lawyers. That's why they spent half a day attending an annual conference on professionalism.
Hundreds of lawyers and judges from the 5th Judicial Circuit - composed of Citrus, Hernando, Marion, Lake and Sumter counties - traded war stories, lamented the ugliness they sometimes see, and learned strategies to make things better.
Hank Coxe told about the duplicitous defense lawyer. As the Florida Bar president this year he's not sitting back. He knew he was preaching professionalism to the choir on Friday; his audience was full of people dedicated to the profession and working hard to make it better. Most lawyers fit into that category.
But he wants the choir to go back out there and sing to the lawyers who weren't there.
Ditto for Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice Fred Lewis. He expressed a "deep concern" about whether the legal profession will be better off in the future, whether the rule of law - "the glue for this great democracy" - will stay as strong as it should.
Part of the solution, he said, is for lawyers to fortify themselves both personally and professionally. Find a way to serve. Find a way to grow. Look inward. Don't allow anger or unhappiness to fester.
While you're at it, he said, help the lawyers around you do the same.
Lewis also called on law schools to be more "circumspect" in the candidates they accept and more demanding of the graduates they produce.
Confront behavior
Breakout sessions for civil, criminal and family law produced lively discussions and interesting scenarios to contemplate, including the real-life story about the attorney who was rude to his colleague. (The offending lawyer was disciplined.)
One lesson: Don't allow unprofessional behavior to go unchecked. Confront it.
One lawyer told a story about a lawyer who, during a discussion outside of court, repeatedly used foul language and invoked God's name in vain. Someone took him aside afterward and explained how inappropriate that was.
The lawyer was shaken. He had talked that way ever since getting out of the Navy 40 years ago. No one had ever called him on it. Until then.
He stopped.
Doing the job right
Before adjourning, the participants gathered back as a group. Kenneth Bell, another Florida Supreme Court justice in attendance, said he had a "sense of joy and hope" for the future.
Jack Moring, a Citrus attorney, had joined the family law breakout group. All the talk of professionalism must lead back to serving the client, he said.
In family law, lawyers must ask themselves, "Have we made things better for the family involved in the case?"
"If we haven't," Moring said, "then we're not doing our job."