March 2003

Gertrude, Mr. Stevens and I Plan Some Picaresque Adventures

 by Lindsay T. Thompson, Bar News Editor

Some men and women are inquisitive about everything, they are always asking, if they see anyone with anything they ask what is that thing, what is it you are carrying, what are you going to be doing with that thing, where did you get that thing, how long will you have that thing, there are many men and women who want to know anything about everything.  

— Gertrude Stein, The Making of Americans (1925)  

Rationalists, wearing square hats,
Think, in square rooms,
Looking at the floor,
Looking at the ceiling.
They confine themselves
To right-angled triangles.
If they tried rhomboids,
Cones, waving lines, ellipses —
As, for example, the ellipse of the half-Moon,
Rationalists would wear sombreros.  

— Wallace Stevens, "Six Significant Landscapes,"

Harmonium (1937), in The Collected Poems (1990)  

    Sometimes it does you good to dump all your assumptions in a bag, cinch it up, and give them a good pummeling. Not only does it clear out a good many spavined and underperforming ones, it makes the unchallenged ones sing for their supper and helps us avoid getting stuck in the past.

    Lawyers are prone to getting stuck, mental wheels spinning like an SUV highcentered on a snowplowed-shut Seattle side street. Between being busy; buffeted by bales of new laws, regs and statutes; clients doing unaccountably stranger things all the time; and a sense of being generally "media saturated," you just want to dig in your heels and shout, "Whoa!"

    Lawyers also suffer from being quick studies. The ability to master any subject often leads them to think they already know everything worth knowing. This, too, contributes to a hardening of the assumptions.

    Then one day you look up. Things Have Changed. A Lot . This leads to consternation and/or adaptation, or a general denial coupled with an urge to shoot the messenger. (Thus the letters to the editor section at the front of this periodical. You can be a grumpy lot. We'll talk about writing more interesting letters to the editor in a future essay.)

    Returning to this gig after eight years, I thought it a good thing to get out a sack and pummel away at what I thought I knew about the Bar Association and you, my colleagues, generally, before I start filling the magazine with stuff I think you'll love but may actually drive you barking mad. So first I asked for a statistical breakdown of our membership as of January 1, 2003 .

    Boy howdy, was I surprised. A full third of you have been admitted since I left the editorship in 1995. No resting these wilted laurels.

    I've also drifted into middle age somehow. I'm smack in the middle of the middle cohort of WSBA members — the 32 percent of us between 41 and 50. Another 33 percent are over 50; the other, Annoyingly Youthful Bunch —35 percent — is under 40. Our most senior member took the oath in 1927; our youngest is 20 years old.

    This translates into wildly divergent generational points of view, to add to difference in member perceptions based on whether you're male or not; an ethnic or other minority; a government, corporate or private-practice lawyer; big firm or small; eastern or western Washington based; plaintiff or defense; from Seattle or anywhere but.

    One result of these trends is that we don't seem to know each other very well. For its part, Bar News has contributed to this, losing, over the years, feature after feature that helped us hang together as a community of colleagues.

    It's a problem I'm going to be working hard to address as editor. For one thing, this month I've brought back "Around the State," a collection of monthly reports from county and other bar associations on what's going on in their areas and groups, in their own words. We'd like to hear from all the county and specialty bars from time to time — write as often or as little as you like, in your own voice. I'm not so much interested in press-released, predigested spin as I am in what's important to you where you live.

    We're going to start profiling members as well, names drawn from a hat rather than those who are well known for being well known. And we're going on the road, launching a 39-month series of profiles of practice in every county in Washington . We're starting with Garfield County (two lawyers) and working our way along numerically to King in three years and a bit.

    I'm hoping to avoid the chirpy travelogue style I grew up with in National Geographic (" Walla Walla County : Wheat and Wine, Sun and Scholarship [What Prison?]"). Help me get started. Write and tell me what it's like where you work; who's interesting to talk with; the good, the bad, and the unintended pro bono of practice; things you love; things you'd change. E-mail is grand because I don't have to retype it; send it to tradelaw@hotmail.com. Letters will be cheerfully received at 200 W. Mercer Street, Suite 207 , Seattle WA 98119-3994 .