April 2003

Sincerely Yours

by Lindsay Thompson, Bar News Editor

Several letters this month ask, in effect, who's the gormless prat who decided to run Adam Karp's article on animal law in the February issue. One correspondent went further, wondering plaintively why we run "every New Age idea" that comes down the pike.  

Which is as it should be. A vigorous debate in Letters is a sign of a strong, healthy bar association. Paul Luvera once wrote an article on jury selection (this was back when the introduction of the struck-jury selection method was widely denounced by lawyers as the end of civilization) and triggered two years' active and wide-ranging discussion among members. We even got a letter from 12 superior court judges writing as a group.           

Some of you who write us, however, need to chill out some. During my years as a common reader, it interested me how often members wrote in to demand: How dare you run something I don't like?           

That's an easy one. It's called serving all of you. This is your magazine. I try to produce each issue to reach a wide array of interests from lifestyle stuff to law office management to the scholarly pieces we occasionally run. When we run articles addressing practice areas less numerously populated than, say, criminal or insurance defense, or plaintiffs' personal-injury law, we get two reactions. Members of the big practice groups ask, "Who's the gormless prat who decided to run that?" and the lawyers who practice in that area say, "'Bout damn time."           

The other thing we find happens is that the article you think is dumb today may come in handy later. We get calls all the time from lawyers who remember we ran it but can't remember when, and now they need it. Call it timed-release learning.           

Rule 1: Bar News belongs to everyone. Given space limitations, we can't indulge everyone's professional interests every month.           

Well, actually, we can. You just have to go to your member of the Board of Governors and say, "Give Bar News a sackful of money to run bigger, more interesting issues every month and raise my dues if that's what it takes."           

Look, out the window — a flying pig!           

Rule 2: Pay heed to the little box in Letters that says we run them in reasonable length.           

We have long interpreted "reasonable length" liberally because sometimes people need the space to make their point. Sometimes, too, diatribes, jeremiads, screeds and denunciations all require a long runway for the writer to get worked up into a truly satisfying, red-faced castigation.          

But some of you tend to repeat yourselves a lot, not only letter-to-letter but within letters. My eighth-grade math teacher, Francis Stanley, used to say the reason he hated opera was because Wagner always passed six or seven good places to stop before he finally got around to it.           

Keep that in mind.            

Rule 3: Keep a sense of perspective about things. It always surprises me how serious some members get about things. Grim, humorless, almost Highland Scots Presbyterian serious. When Kim Novak got all bent out of shape about her "motivations" in a film scene, the director, Alfred Hitchcock, purred, "Kimm … it's jost a … moooo-vie." I am always glad to hear from readers about why they think I — as Bar News' Interim Head Gormless Prat — don't have sense enough to come in from the dark when I choose articles for publication. Some even part friends after the call. But remember, it's just an article.           

OK, you say, enough about being a warm and caring, if slightly snarky in tone, editor. Why animal law?           

Simple. It's an emerging area of interest for lawyers all over the country. Enough WSBA members are interested in it to meet the requirements of our bylaws for forming a section within our Bar. Don't like it? Don't join it. But there are similar sections forming or formed in other state and local bars, law review articles being written about it, and trial lawyers sharing notes on litigation strategies and appellate arguments. That makes it worth noting.            

Will it catch on? Beats me. It might. Then again, it may turn out to be another one of those crackpot ideas of lawyers past, like the one that African-Americans are people or women have rights independent of marriage. You never know. All I can say is what Fred Allen, the radio comedian of the 40s, said when he got critical mail. He sent back a printed post card reading: Dear Sir/Madam: You may, or may not, be right.            

Lindsay Thompson edits Bar News. His views are his own. Send your denunciations to him at tradelaw@thompson-law.com.