March 2003

The Board's Work

by Lindsay T. Thompson, Bar News Editor

Olympia , January 17-18, 2003

 "An intelligent officer, with ten or twelve chosen men, fit for the enterprise, and willing to undertake it, taken from our posts, where they may be spared without inconvenience, might explore the whole line, even to the Western Ocean, have conferences with the natives on the subject of commercial intercourse, get admission among them for our traders, as others are admitted, agree on convenient deposits for an interchange of articles, and return with the information acquired, in the course of two summers. Their arms and accoutrements, some instruments of observation, and light and cheap presents for the Indians, would be all the apparatus they could carry, and with an expectation of a soldier's portion of land on their return, would constitute the whole expense. Their pay would be going on, whether here or there. The interests of commerce place the principal object within the constitutional powers and care of Congress, and that it should incidentally advance the geographical knowledge of our own continent, cannot be but an additional gratification. The nation claiming the territory, regarding this as a literary pursuit, which is in the habit of permitting within its dominions, would not be disposed to view it with jealousy, even if the expiring state of its interests there did not render it a matter of indifference. The appropriation of two thousand five hundred dollars, "for the purpose of extending the external commerce of the United States," while understood and considered by the Executive as giving the legislative sanction, would cover the undertaking from notice, and prevent the obstructions which interested individuals might otherwise previously prepare in its way."  

— Thomas Jefferson, Confidential Letter to Congress, January 18, 1803 , proposing the creation of the Lewis & Clark expedition  

    January — the season of legislation. The Board of Governors has decamped to Olympia every January since the mind of men runneth not to the contrary, there to launch its legislative program and meet with the Supreme Court on matters of common interest.

    Getting bills passed is, of course, an art and not a science, and one much affected this year by everyone's fixation on budget matters. It looks certain longtime alliances on many programs of interest to the WSBA, the courts, and the access to justice community will be frayed by the competition for scarce dollars. Funding will, in fact, be a zero-sum game for many, and may well require the sort of sleight of hand President Jefferson used to get his cherished exploration underway two centuries ago. The expedition had a major impact on our being here at all now, and Bar News will be looking at its effects throughout the coming years.    

    Meeting with the Supreme Court is another annual task. It's largely ceremonial. The WSBA and Court interact in a variety of ways during the year. The January meeting gets both bodies together to talk over matters of common interest, and problems in the administration of the courts, the Bar (which is a branch of the court) and access to justice.

    Most years the BOG and the Court have dinner on Thursday night, then meet Friday morning to talk about things. By a process so mysterious not even all board members know it, some governors make presentations to the Court on things. The rest sit and look gubernatorial. The meeting is a private one, which is just as well. There have been years in the past when liaisons to the board got to sit in, and in those years the meeting was even duller. But according to some who were there, this year's Court confab went well, everyone seems to get along, and that is reckoned to be a good thing.

    Overall, this year's meeting was a slight snooze. Nothing big on the agenda. With the Court meeting taking up half of Friday, the open session only ran three hours Friday afternoon, and the board got through the Saturday agenda early, finishing just after 10:00 a.m. instead of the anticipated noon rising.

    President Dick Manning proposed the formation of a study group to look into creating public seats on the Board of Governors — with Governor Howard Graham chairing, Governors Carlson and Hinojos-Fall, Appeals Court Judge Marlin Appelwick and Young Lawyers Division representative Elizabeth Li as members. This is an idea floated in 2001 as part of the creation of at-large seats on the board, and to some makes perfectly good sense. To others it falls under the heading of Nothing Should Ever Be Done for the First Time. The study group is also part of a gratifying trend not to appoint task forces — which have to have every conceivable interest group represented on them and move with the speed of sludge, cost a lot, and generally come back with recommendations that have been processed to the point of coming out purée of mush. Study groups are more flexible and can act faster and cheaper. The Citizen Member Study Group will come back to the BOG with a plan of action by June.

    Seattle lawyer Bill Neukom chairs the Washington state delegation to the American Bar Association's House of Delegates. As about a quarter of WSBA members are also ABA members, readers may more readily attach the name to the man who was Microsoft's general counsel for 18 years, he of the snappy bow ties. He gave the BOG a report on items of interest on the ABA's midyear meeting agenda in early February.

    Judge Appelwick got the board excited with a presentation of a planned Web site put together by the Council for Public Legal Education, intended to give the public free access to lots of useful law knowledge in a highly accessible format. It's set for a spring launch, but looked pretty impressive as a mock-up. We'll come back to it as a story once it is closer to startup.

    LASER is a program some lawyers and educators started that aims to teach high-school students dispute-resolution skills. The WSBA has given it some modest staff and funding support, and the board reaffirmed that support in a resolution. They also appointed Governor Kerr to its board.

    One of the fun bits of the yearly trek to Olympia is the annual holiday reception the Government Lawyers Bar Association puts on. President Jim Johnson commented he wasn't quite sure what holiday the reception marked, having overshot Christmas and New Year's a bit, but to most observers it was the Mary Fairhurst Holiday. The government lawyers were celebrating the election of one of their own to the Supreme Court. Dick Manning presented Justice Fairhurst with the association's Local Hero Award, given at each BOG meeting to a lawyer who has done good things in the community and profession. Manning read a citation drawn from the Government Lawyers' nomination of Fairhurst, she made some characteristically gracious and thoughtful remarks, and the food was great, by the way. You never want to miss the spread at a Government Lawyers' party.

    Saturday the govs appointed Ron Mattson to the Court Independence Response Team, a Supreme Court body that provides a forum for resolving conflicts between judicial and legislative bodies at all levels. WSBA Legislative Affairs Director Gail Stone gave the govs a long report on the session just getting underway. There are indications tort reform will be a priority, at least in the Senate, and the usual bills to eliminate judicial review, and the filing fee bill, will be making their way. The BOG legislative committee meets weekly to plot strategy as the session continues.

    Eileen Concannon, who chairs the Glass Ceiling Task Force, gave a report on the committee's work developing an action plan to change some of the problems its report identified. In brief, the statewide study the group did shows that: "The demographic makeup of the legal profession resembles a pyramid: the large base is composed of women and men in roughly equal numbers as they leave law school. Once in a firm, women begin to play a smaller role, both numerically and functionally, until the top of the pyramid is overwhelmingly male. Between joining a firm as an entry-level associate and partnership, the number of women attorneys in law firms decreases by more than 50 percent. Women are likely to leave firms for public-sector service or solo practice, which may indicate the relative sense of comfort and acceptance they experience in private firms."

    There are disparities between the number of women in firms in eastern and western Washington, and some minorities included in the scope of the study also have numbers and influence below what one might expect. Law firms are seen as having adapted to the influx of women by hiring them, but the governing structures of law firms have not adapted much to bring women into all aspects of firm life.

    The board praised the thoroughness of the study (read the report at www.wsba.org/info/glassceiling.htm) and voted $1,500 to support the group's ongoing work. Governor Brenneke proposed creating a WSBA liaison committee to work with the group, and the board okayed the idea. She will chair it; Governors Kerr, Hinojos-Fall and Your Correspondent, a former governor, will work on it.

Note for readers: The Board's Work is not the official minutes of the BOG's meetings and actions. I report on what I find interesting or important. Jan Michels, WSBA executive director, keeps the official minutes. Errors, biases and idiocies expressed here are the editor's, alone.

Note, also, that meetings of the BOG are open to members and the general public. You can speak up and everything. So few members ever take the BOG up on it that when they do show up with opinions on things, the influence they have can be remarkable. Give it a try. And, as Alice Longworth said, if you don't have anything good to say about anybody, come sit by me.