Can Lawyers Be Heroes?

Dale C. Doerhoff
Cook, Vetter, Doerhoff & Landwehr
Jefferson City

In my meetings with local bar groups, I usually ask for written comments from the audience on what they think needs to be done to improve the profession. Every time I do this, two or three lawyers say we need to improve the image of the profession. For some, the problem stems from predatory lawyer advertising. Others are troubled by lawyer jokes.¹ Still others focus on the perennial "beauty contest" rankings of lawyers against other professions and trades.

My reaction to this negativism is that our image is not so bad. In fact, it’s quite good. America is fascinated with lawyers, and often in a good way. Just look at the television programs – Law and Order, The Practice, The Guardian, JAG, Allie McBeal and others. Movies have been very good for the profession, too. All the Grisham adaptations are generally positive. "My Cousin Vinnie" wasn’t bad, either.

Any doubt about the status of lawyers in the culture was swept away by the American Film Institute’s recent designation of Atticus Finch as the number one hero in the first century of cinema. To give such recognition to a small-town, solo practitioner who took an unpopular case, pro bono, that did not turn out very well but which served as the vehicle for displaying great moral courage is about as cool as it gets. Picking action heroes Indiana Jones and James Bond to play second and third fiddles to Atticus Finch further enhanced the honor of being number one.

In Missouri, we have a number of real-life lawyers whose deeds qualify them for recognition, in the spirit of Atticus Finch. Last year, Missouri lawyers donated 570,000 hours of free legal service to the poor – protecting women and children from abuse, helping families stay in their homes, counseling unemployed workers, and a myriad of other acts of professional charity to help the most powerless and oppressed people in society cope with problems that respond to legal solutions. We honored these pro bono lawyers as a group by declaring Law Day, May 1, as Pro Bono Appreciation Day and publicizing the pro bono work of Missouri lawyers, both in the aggregate and by giving examples of individual cases. These stories appeared in newspapers across the state.

Also, beginning in December 2002, long before the American Film Institute honored Atticus Finch as a hero, The Missouri Bar was enhancing the image of the profession in this state with an advertising campaign under the theme, "Missouri Lawyers, Protecting Your Rights," with ads portraying Missouri lawyers as professionals people can count on when their rights are at risk. In one year, these advertisements will run 1,200 times on local television stations and 20,000 times on radio stations all over the state.² The public response to this program has been very positive, because the message connects with people’s expectations of what lawyers are supposed to be doing.

Positive images of Missouri lawyers have been promoted by The Missouri Bar in a number of other ways:

• The Missouri Bar’s law-related education programs are in nearly every school in Missouri, working with 2,000 civics teachers and 60,000 students in civics classes (usually in the freshman year of high school). Projects involving lawyers and judges include "We the People," "Project Citizen," "Dialogue on Freedom," and the Spring Conference for Educators.

• Celebration of the bicentennial of the Louisiana Purchase by The Missouri Bar in conjunction with Rotary Student Government Day in Jefferson City.

• Working with the circuit judges, county commissioners and the local media to observe "Juror Appreciation Week" the first week of May.

• Designing, printing and distributing a Missouri Bar-sponsored handbook for citizens called to jury duty (63,000 distributed in the first four months).

• Publicity about the 2003 Spring Storm Legal Assistance Project, where volunteer lawyers helped victims of the devastating storms that struck southwestern and central Missouri and later the St. Louis area.

• Recognition of Missouri lawyers for extraordinary contributions to social and civic causes in the "Lawyers as Good Neighbors" section of The Missouri Bar Bulletin.

On the world scene, the best story about American lawyers has gone unnoticed by the media and the public. The Central European and Eurasian Law Initiative (CEELI) is a public service project of the ABA to assist the emerging democracies in Central and Eastern Europe write modern constitutions and statutes and create justice systems. Since the program began in 1990, approximately 5,000 American lawyers have donated their time and expertise to draft 465 laws and constitutions in 23 countries, from Albania to Uzbekistan. The absence of news is the news. Most of the countries have successfully made the transition from dictatorships to democracies. The CEELI experience indicates that although "thunder run" armored thrusts and "shock and awe" bombing raids make for good television, sending in a few American lawyers does more good in the long run.

While good works and favorable publicity at the state, national and international levels can contribute to a favorable image for lawyers, the front line soldiers are the individual women and men of the profession. Every day, they interact with their clients and the public. How and what they communicate about the profession makes more difference than all the programs of the organized bar put together. There are 26,000 Missouri lawyers, 21,000 of whom are in active practice in the state. With a state population of 5.75 million people, that is one lawyer, and one ambassador of good will, for every 274 Missourians. Being there for the people when they need us to protect their legal rights, serving on civic boards for the betterment of the community, and working to improve the administration of justice are just three of the many ways in which individual Missouri lawyers can be heroes. What are you doing with your opportunities?

Write to the author at ddoerhoff@cvdl.net.

Footnotes

¹ What’s wrong with lawyer jokes? The answer posted at www.lawyer-jokes.us sums up the problem: "Lawyers don’t think (lawyer jokes are) funny, and nobody else thinks they’re jokes."

² The stations run the ads for The Missouri Bar as a public service. If the bar had to pay for the airtime, it would cost at least $1.2 million.