October 2003
The Board's Work
by Lindsay Thompson
Seattle, September 11-12, 2003
Two years ago the Board of Governors met two days after 9/11, numbed by the impossibility of it all, not to mention Revs. Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson's announcement that they had already figured out who was responsible.
This year the board's meeting fell on the anniversary itself, and was begun with a minute of silence. The September meeting is the one at which one president hands off to the next, and the third-year governors are replaced by a set of first-years.
A remarkable unanimity prevailed. The minutes were approved 11-0. The consent calendar, from which members always pull seemingly routine items for discussion, won unanimous approval as well. As a result, 2003-04 WSBA committee members and chairs were approved; technical amendments to APR 14 (foreign law consultants), APR 8(g) (exceptions to practice requirements for military lawyers), and ELC 3.4 (release of confidential information by the Practice of Law Board) won the BOG's OK; Informal Ethics Opinion 102, dealing with electioneering by deputy prosecutors, was withdrawn, having been done in by RCW 42.17.130; and the 2004 Keller deduction members can seek for political activity by the WSBA was determined and approved.
Wayne Blair, who chairs the Court Funding Task Force, gave the board a report on the early stages of the group's work. They are trying to figure out a way to fund the court system better, given that Washington state now spends less money than any other on its courts—14.5 percent. The rest comes from a patchwork of local sources. President-elect Ron Ward and Executive Director Jan Michels also weighed in on the scope of the problem and its impact on district courts.
After lunch the board unanimously approved a charter for its Professional Development Task Force, which is trying to come up with a program for giving new lawyers more practical experience at the front end of their careers. Governor Fawn Sharp reported on the six-week seminar she attended at Oxford University in the summer. It dealt with indigenous peoples and human rights, and by her account was a remarkable experience featuring students from 38 nations.
Two ex-governors, Steve Henderson of Olympia and Y'r Ob'd't Svt, reported on our work as the board's liaisons to the board of the District and Municipal, and Superior Court, Judges' Associations' trustees. Henderson moves to my spot with the superior court judges' board, while I make way to free up time for editing Bar News. On a unanimous recommendation from the Editorial Advisory Board, the Board of Governors unanimously confirmed me as editor, removing the "interim" from the title and tossing in a nice boost in the previously rather mean compensation while they were at it.
Bowtie Bill Neukom, who chairs Washington's delegation to the American Bar Association House of Delegates, updated the BOG on ABA news. He will chair the ABA's decennial governance review, which will result in either his bodily dismemberment by contending power groups, or higher office.
Then the BOG turned to naming two new members of the state's delegation (there are more ways to get into the House of Delegates than there were to get a rotten borough seat in Parliament two centuries ago; these are two in the gift of the Board of Governors). It's always a fascinating look at how the BOG's concern with diversity representation intertwines with good old-fashioned politics. Such things tend, on recounting, to be unedifying, and likely to demoralize children. Suffice it that Paula Boggs of Seattle and Sonia Rodriguez of Yakima were elected.
Nancy Talner then won appointment to the Judicial Information Systems Board, a state courts geek group. Lisa Schuchman, who chairs WSBA's ADR Committee, offered proposals to change the fees and thresholds between one arbitrator and three, in lawyer-fee disputes. That passed unanimously too.
The board recessed at 3 p.m. for a break before the 6 p.m. WSBA Annual Meeting. This year the Annual Meeting was combined with dinner, which meant you got the Chief Justice's state of the judiciary speech with the salad; and awards with dinner, dessert, coffee, and then some.
For the first time in a decade there was a member resolution. Offered by Marilyn S. Smith and Lem Howell, it sought to condemn U.S. government classification of citizens as enemy combatants, depriving them of access to counsel. The Resolutions Committee held a hearing and substituted a four-paragraph ABA resolution for the one-paragraph original. Smith and Howell moved to substitute the original for the substitute. Then Governor Jon Ostlund moved to combine the two so that there was an overall condemnation followed by four paragraphs of knitted brows and deep concern.
The whole business had a jokey, going-through-the-motions air about it. There was no opposition, either in the committee or in the annual meeting. Smith made the main, concise argument; Howell's seconding speech was a mix of partisan jabs and self-referential digressions. The resolution passed on a voice vote. (Read the resolution at www.wsba.org/resolution.doc.)
WSBA awards presentations always end up a poor man's Oscar telecast. Repeated invocations of an egg timer intended to keep remarks short had the opposite effect. Presiders not only introduced introducers, but also then told us what the introducers would say. Which they then did. Recipients, with a few laudable exceptions, went on and on, and in true Oscar fashion, if there were multiple representatives of a recipient, they all weighed in. Some presenters even read us what the plaque said. Friends: it is possible to be witty, eloquent, and brief. Leave the audience wanting more, not ground down by having gotten it all.
A list of the recipients appears elsewhere in this issue.
Friday the board took up reports from the Lawyers' Fund for Client Protection and the Legal Foundation of Washington.
Then some sand got in the gears when $40,000 of unallocated money turned up.
Our tale begins with the General Practice Section. Formed in the 90s, GPS grew drowsy and slipped into a coma two years go. WSBA staff proposed shutting it down and applying its $40,000 in accumulated funds to the cost of a free year's membership in the Law Practice Management & Technology Section to GPS members, offering CLE coupons/discounts, and developing some programs and materials for general practitioners.
After a slight pause, governors started offering up different ways to slice the hog. One moved to spend some of the money on professional development for young lawyers. A liaison wanted to let section members choose which section they migrated to in the free year, reasoning that all GPs are family lawyers at heart. Another governor moved to refund last year's dues to those who had paid them. Yet another wanted to combine the free section transfer with the last year's refund. Then another allowed as how maybe the section had flatlined not because it had run out of reasons to be, but because the WSBA hadn't nurtured it enough. Maybe, the reasoning went, if we give them six months, section members can resuscitate it.
Oh come on, said others present. Dead is dead. There's no rolling away the stone on this stiff. If members want a revived section it takes only 50 of them to do it in the same six months. The board voted to send the General Practice Section to WSBA's Sunny von Bulow Wing and see how things look in six months.
Toward the meeting's end, the board took up a report from a committee chaired by Governor Howard Graham on adding public members to the board. Graham was away tending to a family emergency, so outgoing President Dick Manning decided to postpone a full discussion, but let the four outgoing governors share their wisdom on the subject as they prepared to exit, stage ex.
Governors Davidson, Hyslop, Isaki, and Lehto then spent half an hour filibustering against the idea. They were Old Europe in full cry, the Polonius Quartet, repeating each other endlessly while complaining that expanding the BOG makes it harder to get things done because there are three extras wanting to talk. With no sense of irony they heaped scorn on the idea and then concluded that members should keep an open mind. (A full disclosure footnote: I support adding a public member. I proposed it in a 2001 motion that was amended to create this study.)
Governor Davidson, who was also outgoing WSBA treasurer, gave a précis of financial issues (overall, the WSBA is in fine financial fettle).
Then the meeting ended. The next gathering will be held in Portland October 17-18 and will be reported in the December Bar News. You can see the dates and locations for future meetings on the WSBA website; all meetings are open to members. And, as always, this report is not the Official Version.
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