Headlines

The board passed a resolution supporting principles developed by the Access to Justice Technology Bill of Rights Committee. The principles are supposed to be a best-practices guide for using technology in the justice system to make information and access greater rather than inadvertently less. The principles will be fleshed out by comments later. You can see the work as it stands at www.atjtechbillofrights.org.
The board approved a task-force recommendation to add long-term-care insurance coverage for WSBA members through a sponsored insurance program, designating the Marsh Company as the broker.
Joe Delay of Spokane and Greg Dallaire of Seattle were reappointed to the state Judicial Conduct Commission. Lish Whitson and J.D. Smith were appointed to the ABA House of Delegates.
The Spokane County Bar Association Volunteer Lawyers Program and the Tacoma-Pierce County Bar Association Volunteer Legal Services Program received the 2003 WSBA Pro Bono Award at the Access to Justice Conference in June.
Spokane lawyer Michael Pontarolo won a three-way race for the 5th District seat on the board. Bellevue attorney Kristin Olson won the 1st District race. In the 7th-West District a runoff election was called between Ellen Conedera Dial and Mark A. Johnson. (Mark Johnson won the runoff election.)

Details

May means Spokane. The board met at the newly restored and reopened Davenport Hotel, convening in the grand oak-paneled Elizabethan Room with nary a hey nor a ho nor a hey nonny no.

WSBA Executive Director Jan Michels briefed the board on an apparent outbreak of mold or fungus in the ventilation system of WSBA headquarters in Seattle. A sickening, acrid smell rendered some parts of the office unusable, forcing relocation of some staff to other parts of the office tower and some to work from home. (The culprit was later discovered to be a batch of new computer monitors in the office.) This has contributed to delays in the summer issues of Bar News.

One of the board's ministerial tasks is appointing people to things. The American Bar Association's House of Delegates had some vacancies come up in the Washington delegation, but a threshold question was, how many?

An easy question on the surface, but the ABA has more ways to get to the House of Delegates than you can shake a stick at. There were definitely two members' terms expiring. But then there was a requirement that another seat be held by a lawyer under 35, and the possibility that growth in ABA membership in Washington could lead to the creation of another seat this summer. But one of the people applying for appointment was also considering running for a regional seat and was considered a shoo-in for it. If that person got appointed to a seat from Washington in the meantime, it would cause the loss (assuming a win) of that extra regional seat, since someone from another state would win it.

As you can see, ABA politics is more than a little complicated. How many seats to fill occupied some time. In the end, the board took the conservative route and appointed incumbent Lish Whitson to another term and Young Lawyers President-elect J.D. Smith to the other certain seat. The rest will sort itself out some way later.

Another decision was appointing a member and alternate to the Judicial Conduct Commission, which reviews complaints against judges. It's a gig where experience counts, so the board renominated current member and alternate Joe Delay and Greg Dallaire.

Giving awards is another vexing problem for the WSBA. There's a morbid urge to give them every year just because they exist, and, over time, to create more of them. The WSBA annual meeting gets more like the Academy Awards every year. Try to limit the recipients' comments? Good luck. Try to silence them? The presenters will fill up the slack.

So lately they've been spreading the awards around to other events, like the Oscars ("This year's award for best footnote form was presented at a luncheon earlier today. . . ."). The board voted to confer the WSBA Pro Bono Award at the June Access to Justice Conference in Wenatchee. The recipients are the Spokane County Bar Association Volunteer Lawyers Program and the Tacoma-Pierce County Bar Association Volunteer Legal Services Program.

The WSBA marked the halfway point in its fiscal year in May, and all signs point to an on-budget landing. No surprises there.

The board has had a committee tinkering with its long-range plan to cast it forward another long range into the future. The committee brought forth the goals, saying the comments and details would follow if the board approved the direction they were proposing to head.

One goal called on the WSBA to lead more in juvenile and criminal law matters in the state. That brought a call for a mention of victims' rights, as well, from Ed Holm, the Thurston County prosecutor. Governor Jon Ostlund, a public defender, harrumphed politely and everyone began dividing along the usual lines—prosecutors to the right, defenders to the left.

A variety of ways to address the issue were bruited about until it began to sound like the Legislature announcing it would raise prices on liquor in state stores rather than increase the liquor tax, thus raising more money without raising taxes. They came up with something everyone could live with and adopted it. I'll come back to the issue when the details come out.

The board had lunch with members of the Spokane County Bar Association and polled them on what they thought was important in life, the law, their practices, and WSBA affairs. The results get assembled after every meeting, so showing up and speaking up counts.

Spokane lawyer Joe Nappi appeared after lunch to present some recommendations from the task force he chairs on member benefits. The committee recommended picking an insurance broker to offer members some long-term disability-insurance plans.

Why pick a broker? The reasoning's the same as for having a broker offer professional-liability insurance, as the WSBA has for years. The market goes up and down, and you can't always count on companies offering coverage. Having an endorsed broker is a sort of safety net to ensure coverage is available to members.

A question popped up from the audience about whether the half-dozen plans the broker said it intended offering treated same-gender couples the same as opposite-gender ones, since the plan summary talked about spouses and partners. More likely law partners, was the answer, but other than that we don't know. Quick call to the broker's rep. They didn't know either? Then why put it in the information for the board if no one knows what it means, came the rejoinder. If you don't know the plans treat all members equally, it's not really a Member Benefit, it's a Some Members Benefit, or a More Members Than Not Benefit. Well, said one board member, if policies don't offer the same benefits to everyone, there you are. That's the market for you. And how do we know we are serving all members if we don't ask? We'll look into it, was the reply.

Having blitzed through the agenda in double-quick time, the board rose mid-afternoon Friday. Saturday morning they heard the report from Legislative Committee Chair Michele Radosevich and WSBA lobbyist Gail Stone. Both looked remarkably unruffled from their 105-day trip through the looking glass into the Legislature's sandbox. The short version is that two of the three WSBA-sponsored bills were passed and signed. The filing-fee bill, to raise the filing fee for support of legal services to the poor, was "on life support," said Administrator of the Courts Mary McQueen, but the odds of a resurrection in the special session would have to be considered, well, miraculous.

Tort reform didn't amount to much, because its backers insisted on all or nothing and so got nothing.

The most interesting thing reported was that the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee was reported to have written the Chief Justice to say no lawyers or judges were welcome in the committee. Governor Bill Hyslop called for creation of a work group to assess ways to enhance WSBA's standing in the Legislature. Gail Stone commented that much of the problem is personality driven: Some legislators get worked up over something, and there's no one much to tell them to behave (that's my characterization, not hers: she's much more diplomatic).

Governor Paul Lehto and Don Horowitz presented a set of best-practices principles to guide the Access to Justice Technology Bill of Rights project. The goal is to help the law system use technology to make it easier to access and use, which can occur when no one thinks to ask about consequences of actions, or assumes that one size always fits all. The details are to be worked in. I'll return to the story when they have been. In the meantime, you can see the work in progress at the website listed at the top of this space.

The board adjourned midmorning. I got out in time to catch the Lilac Festival Junior Parade: scores of middle-school bands snaking their way through downtown Spokane. "Louie Louie" is eternal.

The Board's Work is an unofficial account of meetings of the Board of Governors. The official summary is available at
http://www.wsba.org/lawyers/links/flash.htm.

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