Theresa L. F. Levings
Badger & Levings, L.C.
Kansas City

My slide into anonymity is beginning. This is my last Journal column, and I have one shot left in the Bulletin. Come September 13, my short and happy life as a bar president will be over.

My personal goal this year was to not go bankrupt. So far, so good.

As to my bar goals, now would be the traditional time to recite all the accomplishments and successes of the year. There were more than I thought possible and fewer than I wanted. I am still working on some and will continue to do so until it's time for Dale Doerhoff to take the reins. I will forgo the list.

I just saw a movie entitled, "Insomnia." It was not a retrospective about a 39-year-old mother of a colicky baby who never slept two hours straight for three months solid or about the mother's return to the full-time practice of law to prepare for and try the "case from hell" for another three months (beginning in January) in lovely downtown Wichita. But I digress. "Insomnia" is a dark film about a veteran detective who betrays himself in his pursuit of truth and justice. In the last scene the veteran, played by Al Pacino, is wounded and drawing his last breaths. The fresh-faced detective who has idolized Pacino is about to destroy a piece of evidence because she believes it will tarnish Pacino's name and lead to the wrong result. Pacino stops her. "Don't lose your way," he tells her.

Today I received a report in the mail, "Public Perceptions of Lawyers Consumer Research Findings" prepared on behalf of the American Bar Association. A nationally representative sample of 750 American households was surveyed for this project. They said some nice things about us, but not enough. Less than one in five said they are "extremely" or "very confident" in the legal profession or lawyers. The medical profession got 50% approval. The executive branch of government rated 47%. The judiciary overall was ranked well with a third of those surveyed, with federal courts at 38% and state and local courts at 31%. More disturbing is that 74% of respondents agreed with the statement, "Lawyers are more interested in winning than in seeing that justice is served." And 69% agreed that lawyers are more interested in making money than in serving their clients. A common criticism was that lawyers were believed to manipulate both the system and the truth. While 59% believed that lawyers are knowledgeable about the law and are interested in serving their clients, 34% believed that lawyers deserve the bad reputation they have.

These numbers are disheartening. I've spent this year mostly seeing the best that lawyers have to offer and proudly advocating for lawyers, our legal system and the importance of providing all of our citizens access to justice in our civil courts through better funding of Legal Services and increased pro bono representation. The privilege of this work, not just this year but for all my years as a lawyer, has been the steady force that has helped me find my way.

A recent article in the ABA Journal featured a memoir by Michael Tigar. Tigar is a trial lawyer, author and professor whose most recent notable client was Terry Nichols in the Oklahoma bombing capital murder case. After the jury deadlocked on imposition of the death penalty in that case, Judge Richard Matsch imposed a life sentence on Nichols. In his book, Tigar writes of his ongoing fear of becoming "a well-to-do and skilled but irrelevant lawyer." The reviewer noted that "Tigar has found meaning in law by taking on issues he embraces with passion. They include civil rights, free speech, government surveillance and the death penalty." Tigar says his mission in life is to "look at what needs correcting."

Maybe Tigar's fear is what Americans perceive as reality about today's lawyers—skilled, greedy, not interested in justice, men and women who have lost their way.

I reject that reality.

Everyday I see evidence to the contrary. Like the email I received July 2 from Katherine Wessling in St. Louis. Here is her story: She is the only lawyer on staff at a small non-profit called Legal Advocates for Abused Women. LAAW provides free representation at order of protection hearings in eight counties to low-income victims of domestic violence. Her own work is supplemented by 60 volunteer lawyers. When Ms. Wessling's pregnancy became high risk and required her to be hospitalized on bedrest for many weeks, these lawyers came to the rescue for her and the victims of violence in those eight counties. Over six months, they covered 156 hearings pro bono, and no one who needed help went to court unrepresented during that time.

But I can't ignore the perception. None of us should. We also can't ignore the possibility that any truth exists to support the perception.

I know we all can't be or don't want to be bar cheerleaders or crusaders like Mike Tigar. But we can be volunteers who step up when the call goes out. We can go into our schools and churches and community centers and share our knowledge of our laws, our system of justice and the value of lawyers. We can lobby our elected representatives to improve our laws and make equal access to justice a reality. With the power and privilege that are ours as lawyers, we can defy and defeat the perception. There is no excuse for becoming irrelevant. The needs, the causes, the opportunities and the responsibilities are endless.

Do you care? What are you willing to do?

Thanks for the soapbox and the memories.