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Three men remember the days before billable hours and crass advertisements. Would they do it all over again?
By SHARON L. BOND
© St. Petersburg Times, published February 18, 2001
ST. PETERSBURG -- Sam Mann Jr. likes to tell the story of his grandfather and the goose lawyer.
"My father graduated from Vanderbilt Law School and went into practice with my grandfather," who had not gone to law school but had studied the law and gotten his license.
"One day a farmer came in to see my grandfather. He wanted to sue the railroad because a train had run over his goose," Mann said. So the grandfather directed the farmer to the office of his son with the assurance, "he's the goose lawyer."
A young lawyer just out of school will take most anything, Mann said.
He told the goose lawyer story recently in his office in the SouthTrust Bank Building with two associates present, Jack S. Carey and William F. Davenport Jr. The three were goose lawyers at the same time, entering the profession 50 years ago within months of each other.
Now, with a collective 150 years, they are ending their careers with the same firm, Harris Barrett Mann & Dew. Davenport, 73, stopped appointments last week and will be tying up loose ends until the end of the month. Carey, 74, is leaving March 2. Mann, 75, will stay with the firm but curtail his duties.
"Sam and I graduated at the same time," Carey said. "Bill and I graduated from high school together. All three of us were born here."
When they started the practice, all the law firms were in downtown St. Petersburg, and The Pier was not upside-down, they said.
"The lawyers met at Simpson's for lunch or breakfast," Davenport said, referring to the Poinsettia Restaurant by its owner's name. It was on Central Avenue between Fourth and Fifth streets. "And we sat on green benches and talked to each other."
"There were about 140 lawyers in St. Petersburg in 1951 south of Ulmerton Road," Carey said. "There are over 1,000 now south of Ulmerton Road."
Mann specialized in civil litigation, defending railroad companies, electric utilities and small aircraft corporations. Davenport worked in commercial law, including banking, real estate transactions and estate planning, and on land use issues such as planning and zoning. For the past 15 years, Carey has concentrated on estate planning, probate and real estate, but earlier in his career he did a bit of everything.
The three said the legal world has changed.
"The law was more responsive then as a profession. Lawyers acted more professionally than they do now," Davenport said.
"It turned into an industry rather than a profession because of the billable-hours concept," Mann said, referring to the practice many law firms use of requiring attorneys to work a certain number of hours per year that can be billed directly to clients.
Davenport said that would be too expensive for some cases, such as writing a will for a modest estate. "A will still is worth X dollars and no more," he said.
All three lament the fact that advertising is allowed in their profession.
"Advertising in those days consisted of public service," Carey said.
They probably would pick the law again as their life's work.
"I'm so steeped in the law," Mann said. "My cousins, my father, my sister. The firm was here in St. Petersburg. I just continued right on, going to law school and then joining my father's law firm."
He would do it again if the situation were similar. "I've enjoyed it. I've been in a very challenging area of the law: civil litigation. It was very engaging and challenging."
Davenport said that from the time he was a teenager he wanted to be a lawyer. "My dad wanted to and never could. He had to go to work out of the eighth grade."
Today? Davenport pauses before answering, then ticks off the accumulation of things that bother him about the practice of law but concludes that it still is an honorable profession. He would do it again.
Carey said he made up his mind in about the ninth grade to become a lawyer, following in his father's footsteps. He would pick the same profession today "in a heartbeat because it has been so good to me." Changes that have made the law less palatable were gradual enough that they have been easy to accommodate, he said.
"I was blessed with the world's greatest clients. That was one of the things that made the practice of law so pleasurable," Carey said. "I could go on for another 100 years."