November 2003

Act Two

by Lindsay Thompson
Bar News Editor

Nobody knows what I am trying to do but I know and I know when I succeed.

—Gertrude Stein, in John Malcolm Brinnin's The Third Rose: Gertrude Stein and Her World (1959)

It's hard to explain how to be Bar News editor. You have to develop a sense of the WSBA's membership, and what combinations of articles people submit will meet my goal, which is to make every issue varied enough that nearly everyone will find something interesting or useful in it. Gertrude Stein's comment is as precise as I can get. 
 
Happily, almost all of you who have contacted me since February seem to think I'm succeeding. Hundreds of you have sent me letters and e-mails commenting on content, suggesting articles, and passing on news. You've been telling the Board of Governors you've noticed changes and like them. That's helpful, as I serve at their pleasure.
 
I like hearing from you and value your views. Please keep the contacts coming. I answer all my calls and mail, although, with the demands of The Annoying Day Job, sometimes it takes me a little while.
 
Your votes of confidence were a big influence on the unanimous decisions of the Editorial Advisory Board and the Board of Governors at summer's end to confirm me as editor. I'm grateful to them, and to you.
 
I can't tell you everything I'm going to do next, because I don't fully know. These interim months, I concentrated on minding the store. Now that I can think in years instead of months, I'm thinking hard.
 
I can, however, tell you five things I need from you.

1. I need your advice.

Thanks to the BOG, WSBA management, and a BOG committee to review Bar News chaired by President David Savage, we're doing a member survey in November. If you get called, please take a few minutes and answer the questions we're asking. We want to get away from "management by anecdote" and see what you like or don't like about the magazine, or would like to see in it. The results will help us shape Bar News's future and get more advertising.
 
I'm running the survey in the December issue. Even if you're not part of the random sample of readers who get called, I want to know what you think. Please fill it out and send it to me.

2. I need your news.

Please let me know what's up with you—moves, honors, cases you handle, local bar events. "Around the State" is about law on the ground, lawyer by lawyer. If you're not seeing your county or bar group in the reports, it's 'cause no one's reporting it. John Nichols, who used to write the hilarious Clark County Reports, ended up a judge. Randy Gordon went from the East King County Report to the Board of Governors.
 
Who knows? It could be a real career kick-start.1 

3. I need your articles.

Bar News readers are also our writers. I'm always looking for articles that will help us be better lawyers—stories about trends and changes in the law in your fields, and views from the bench. Sure, I turn out one fabulous column after another here (John Rupp, the first editor, modestly called his column "Scintillae"), but that leaves 63 more pages to fill every month.

4. I need your patience.

Every decision I make about content will make some of you unhappy. As any water witch will tell you, it's hard striking water every time. Some people tell me Bar News is too liberal; others that it's too conservative. But I'll always pick stuff I think you need to know about. Times are changing. As a profession, we have to keep within hailing distance of the public that gives us our living.

5. I need you to write Amy Hines (amyh@wsba.org) and thank her for being such a wonderful managing editor for five years.

My job is vague. Amy's job is hard. Every piece of every issue—ads, photos, articles—starts as a separate piece of copy or visual material. There are hundreds and hundreds of them, and Amy has to shoehorn them all in, 64 pages an issue, 12 times a year, and come up with covers and interior art as well. She has made me look good.
 
After five years—including this one, bailing me out of all the things I didn't know—Amy has decided to go find something completely different. I will really, really, really miss her. She has become a friend as well as one of my bosses. As the sportsman Sir Toby said admiringly of Maria in Twelfth Night, "She's a beagle, true bred."
 
Thank you, Amy. Send us postcards.

NOTE
1. Yes, then there's me, who went from Bar News to the Board of Governors, then back to Bar News. I prove the Peter Principle—"In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence"—in spades.

Lindsay Thompson practices law at Fishermen's Terminal in Seattle. You can contact him at tradelaw@thompson-law.com.

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