June 2004

The Board's Work

by Lindsay Thompson

Tukwila, April 2-3, 2004

Well, at least it was close to home. One of the ideas behind the BOG's peregrinations is that they liaise — as the Brits say — with local bar associations.

Trouble was, the South King County Bar met the week before. They had their annual dinner with the Supreme Court. So there we were, just off I-405 in a hotel that was 90 percent atrium: a sort of poor man's homage to John Portman. The weather outside was perfect: sunny, a nice breeze. We met in a windowless room for a day and a bit. Such is life on the road.

Ellen Dial, chair of the Ethics 2003 Committee, and Doug Ende, the committee's reporter, came back to give the BOG a report on some more of the changes they expect to be in their final report. They brought a summary of the changes for the members to look at, rather than the entire 850 pages of material the final report comprised. Among that batch is a set of the current rules of professional conduct, the model rules of the ABA, and a redlined version showing the changes and comments. The whole package was to follow these previews by the committee.

The Board almost immediately bogged down on proposed changes to the rules on fees and clients. Some started trying to figure out how the rule would affect their practices. Other started thinking out loud. Governor Jon Ostlund thought a special meeting would be needed just to consider the changes.

Lunch arrived.

Specialty bar associations were invited to partake, and discuss over the meal how the WSBA could be more useful to them. The results will be compiled and looked upon.

Pat McIntyre, of the Northwest Justice Project, and Ada Shen-Jaffe, of Columbia Legal Services, gave the board a long report on the reorganization of the two bodies to reflect the fiscal and legal restriction realities of the times. Columbia has laid off a bunch of people and will retrench; NJP will expand to pick up the slack as best it can.1

BOG nominated Nieves Negrete, a nonlawyer director of Yakima County Volunteer Legal Services, and former King County Bar President Daniel Gottlieb — and renominated Spokane County District Judge Greg Tripp — to the Access to Justice Board. The Supreme Court will make the appointments.

BOG next approved a policy to guide future boards in evaluating member benefits from non-WSBA businesses for endorsement. Everyone who spoke up said it was a good effort.

Treasurer Bryce Dille brought a request for some cash to have a salary consultant look at the salary scales for WSBA staff, and to kick up to $1,500 to a sponsorship of the Loren Miller Bar Association's celebrations of the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education. Both were approved.

Former BOG member and WSBA president Dale Carlisle and WSBA Information Technology Director Robert Levinson updated the board on the multiyear project to upgrade and unify the WSBA's computer programs managing finance and membership issues. It was complicated, but they say things are going fine and sections of the new system are already running.

A proposal to have CLE give copies of its publications to the county law libraries brought CLE Director Mark Sideman to the meeting. He told the BOG that CLE has a mandate to make a profit, but the market is so volatile that one CLE that cleared $100K a few years ago did only $9,000 this year. Giving books away for free cuts into the money, especially if it's 39 copies of everything, and it all adds up, Sideman said. Good point, BOG said; we'll think about this some more.

Kenyon Luce and a band of military lawyers appeared to ask BOG for final approval of the conversion of the WSBA committee on services to members of the armed forces into a section of the Bar Association. The idea is the committee may attract more members that way, since you can join the section but have to be appointed to a committee. Luce's meandering presentation covered a variety of tangents, including an attempt to tell a joke about a Hittite, since "we all have to be so pc here, I can't tell one about any existing ethnic groups. No one here is a Hittite, are you?" I gave up taking notes and turned to The New York Times crossword. For reasons I've already forgotten, Luce never finished the joke about the Hittites, and despite forgetting Rule One of all presentations to bodies you want something from,2 he got his section, and everyone left happy. I went home and mixed a shaker of martinis to appease the roiled spirits of my Hittite forebearers.

BOG reconvened Saturday morning to hear a report from Governor Katie O'Sullivan, who's on the Electronic Legal Research Evaluation Team. That group is looking for a legal research service that can be offered to all WSBA members. They have a contender, and have sent a letter laying out what they think such an offering should make available. So it progresses.

Executive Director Jan Michels pointed out a front-page story in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer on a burgeoning scandal in the Grant County public defender system, and said The Seattle Times was planning a three-part series starting April 4.

ABA delegate J.D. Smith, and, later, Lish Whitson, engaged the board in what turned into a long discussion of how BOG interacts with the ABA delegation. Usually the ABA delegation is unseen and unheard except before the meetings of the House of Delegates. Then someone comes, well, sometimes someone comes, and asks BOG if they want to instruct the delegation on how to vote on the mind-numbing catalogue of obscure things the House of Delegates will debate. "No, just go vote your hearts out," was my response when doing time on the BOG.

Well, all of this was a prelude to a discussion of whether BOG ought to pay a bigger chunk of some or all ABA delegates' way to the twice-annual meetings, since it's pricey enough that younger lawyers are more or less ruled out of delegate positions. And, Smith explained, you have to start young to get ahead in the ABA. If you eventually get to be president, or some other big leader in the ABA, there are vague but important benefits to the WSBA, so it all works out in the end.3

The matter will be studied some more.4

Gail Stone gave a legislative session report. The big success of this session was $1.9 million in new funds for legal aid, even though, as Ada Shen-Jaffe noted, that doesn't get funding even back to where it was in 1999.

All the WSBA-sponsored bills passed. The tort-reform scrum remained more or less midfield, though a proposal to reduce judgment interest on tort judgments came back to life and was passed. Governor Locke signed it. Governor Randy Gordon grilled Stone on why she had said at the last meeting the bill looked dead.

"It came back to life," she replied. "Things like that happen in the Legislature." If the right person in the right place takes an interest, such things can happen. There was some discussion about how to spruce up the legislative intelligence effort.

Lish Whitson, who chairs the Judicial Recommendations Committee, gave a report on how many people have been rated.

That's it. I'm outta here.

NOTES
1 In May 2003 I invited critics of legal services programs to come up with a model that would pass conservative critiques and adequately meet the needs of the poor in Washington. I got only one response, a letter from a reader who said, just pretend it's still 1967, things worked fine then. Come on kids; let's have some more ideas. The way things are going you'll have a blank slate soon enough.

2 "When it's going your way, siddown!"

3 It made me think of starting in kindergarten on scheming how to get elected high school prom king.

4 I'm sure it was just me, but I couldn't figure out why so much attention was being given to something that will benefit a handful of people who are delegates to a voluntary bar association, while BOG show no similar concern for the liaisons who attend their meetings and make a major contribution to the deliberations of this, our mandatory bar association.

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