August 2003
The Board's Work
by Lindsay Thompson
Wenatchee, June 6, 2003—When you edit Bar News you have to attend BOG meetings and write a report on the BOG's deliberations. So, like Ruth, whither the BOG goest, I will go.
The BOG went to Wenatchee for the annual Access to Justice/Bar Leaders Conference. The ATJ side of the event is always interesting—hundreds of people gathering to share ideas on new or better ways to provide legal services to the poor among us. They're a remarkably philosophical lot, discouraged sometimes by the endless political effort spent on chiseling away the meager funds available, but never bowed.
They produce a musical every year, too. The Moderately Talented (Yet Plucky) Repertory Theatre of Justice's annual production is worth the trip by itself. Afterward they roll up the rug and dance out both their shoes to the tunes of the all-attorney band Funk Pro Tunc. You can even see it broadcast on TVW.
The Bar Leaders Conference does something useful too, I'm told. This year, I hear, they produced actor Clay Jenkinson, who is to Jefferson what Holbrook is to Twain. He was part of a program/panel on technology ("the Rittenhouse Orrery is the last word on tracking the movements of all seven planets").
WSBA President Dick Manning called the BOG to order and asked for a round of applause for the governors who, organized by Governor Fawn Sharp, ran in the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation Run in Seattle, styling themselves the Bogger Joggers and raising a lot of money for the cause. Well done, said everyone.
The Sage of Poulsbo, Jeff Tolman, presented a report for the Professional Development Committee, created by the president to see what the WSBA and the state's law schools could do to make the experience of law students more relevant to what they need to know when they pass the exam and start practice.
Made up of lawyers, judges, law school staff and faculty, young lawyers and law students, and WSBA staff, the committee recommended requiring a four-hour orientation and training session for all new Washington lawyers before admission; requiring lawyers to do 15 hours of CLE in skills-training fields their first year after admission (now they get a free pass on that year); expanding and promoting mentor programs between new and more senior WSBA members; reviewing the effectiveness of the Rule 9 intern program, which lets law students appear in court; asking the state's law schools to adapt skills instruction to cover more of the ground covered in the ABA's McCrate Report on legal education; establishing a task force to develop recommendations for a pre-licensure practical experience for new lawyers; and developing a lawyer-skills checklist to get down in fixed form what new lawyers need to know to make a good start in practice.
Overall the report was well received as a road map to actually helping new lawyers be really good lawyers. Articling, which provoked paroxysms a decade ago, seemed worthy of examination. WYLD President Lance Hester asked the BOG to hold off on the intro four-hour CLE and the first-year CLE requirement until he could consult his board, and the BOG agreed, swiftly adopting the rest of the recommendations.
Cashmere lawyer Steve Crossland presented a report on the first year of operation of the Practice of Law Board. It was created to determine if and how legal practice can or should be unbundled to allow nonlawyers to do some things in order to alleviate the shortage of legal services, especially to the poor. The board also has some investigatory and regulatory power over unauthorized practice of law, and already has several dozen complaints they are looking into.
They've been busy working out rules for doing business, Crossland said. Crossland, who has been patiently dogging these issues for over a decade, is one of the WSBA's unsung heroes. He actually gets things done.
The BOG took up a report on Law Week, a program that tries to get lawyers and judges into every school in the state in May, to teach students how the legal system works. While the program has not yet reached its goal, it is outstripping current WSBA capacity to staff it, so the BOG's Long-Range Planning Committee was mandated to sort out what to do next.
Governor Lucy Isaki chairs the BOG's Awards Committee, and presented a partial list of persons and institutions recommended for honors this year. Since divulging the names now would spoil the fun at the annual meeting in September, I'll report who got what then, or you can sneak a peek at www.wsba.org/2003annawards.htm.
Evelyn Fielding Lopez chairs the Public Information and Media Relations Committee. They worked up some guidelines for defending the judiciary from unfair attacks in the media—an increasing problem. The board, having sung the committee's praises for doing a good job, approved the plan.
After lunching with the Access to Justice Board, the BOG spent the afternoon selecting the WSBA president for 2004-05.
The presidency rotates between eastern Washington, King County, and western Washington, in an attempt to ensure some geographic diversity at the top of the greasy pole. In September, Dick Manning (King County) turns over the gavel to Dave Savage (eastern Washington), so in 2004 the presidency cycles back through King County.
There were three candidates: Ken Davidson, an outgoing member of the BOG from Kirkland; Steve Reisler, a former Bar News editor and BOG member in the late 1980s who practices in Seattle; and Ron Ward, a Seattle lawyer who was elected to the BOG last year.
The candidates made written and oral presentations to the BOG, and fielded questions from BOG members and liaisons. The lengthy and thoughtful debate highlighted—but didn't resolve—increasingly apparent flaws in BOG governance. Although officially any WSBA member can run for president, in fact only one president has ever been elected without prior board service, and that was a quarter century ago. Although BOG members once commonly served their three years, returned to real life, then came back later to serve as president, now it is apparent that being away from the BOG (and the memories of sitting members) is effectively a disqualification, which diminishes an already small pool of potential choices. Although members run for a three-year term on the BOG, in the six presidential elections ending in Wenatchee, four resulted in presidents being chosen from sitting BOG members who then resigned their seats. That results in the BOG's appointing successors to serve the remaining year or two, reducing the number of democratically elected members and diminishing the experience base of the BOG.
The trouble is, the president-elect position was created in no small part on the assumption that the BOG would elect presidents from outside the BOG now and again, or from past BOG members who've been away awhile. The year-in-waiting was intended to give them a reasonable time to get up to speed on things before taking the gavel. That, of course, hasn't happened, and it now means if you want to be president you're looking at a five-year commitment—three on the BOG, a year as president-elect, and a year as president. So when you combine that with the iron grip of the rotation between eastern and western Washington, and King County (which can put one's next chance after leaving the BOG two to four years out, and thus push you into the black hole where the BOG consigns candidates they don't know), well, things are getting into a mess where being a BOG member is a means to an end rather than an end in itself. Considering that the WSBA is a strong-board, less-strong-president system, things seem to be stood on their heads.
I'll come back to these problems another time. For now, suffice it to say the BOG found they had three really good candidates from which to choose, and had a hard time choosing. They used to vote by voice, but now that they usually have a colleague (two this year) to consider, they went to a secret ballot and didn't announce the results—except that Ron Ward was elected and will become president-elect in September. We'll be reporting more about him in due course.
That took most of the afternoon. The BOG took some other, lesser actions, but they were all ministerial, and you'll get on fine not reading about them here.
The BOG met in Bellingham in July. That report will come next month. Meetings are open to WSBA members. You can ask questions and comment on the work. Come watch the sausage being made.
And, as always, the views expressed here are certainly not the WSBA's or the BOG's. Just mine.
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