June 2004

A Few Minutes with Rob Boggs

First the basics. I just turned 50. I was born March 2, 1954, in Peoria, Illinois. Yes, Peoria as in, "Will it play in Peoria?" Peoria was part of the vaudeville circuit. It also produced much of the bathtub gin for Al Capone's Chicago and still produces more alcohol than any city in the world. I grew up there, in and out of the Chicago suburbs, and in Michigan.

Sometime in junior high, around 1966 or 1967, I visited relatives in the Puget Sound area. I especially enjoyed visiting my aunt and uncle, who lived on Seattle's Capitol Hill. It seemed like the place to be. My dream was to graduate from high school, buy a VW, and drive to Seattle to attend the UW. Subsequently (only lawyers say subsequently), my aunt and uncle moved to Berkeley and my aspirations moved south.

Unfortunately, those dreams did not come true. After graduating from high school I went to Michigan State University. I journeyed through three majors and ended up with a B.A. in Economics in 1975. Essentially, I got a well-rounded liberal arts degree. While I was at MSU, a colleague on the Board of Governors, Randy Gordon, was down the road in Ann Arbor.

I didn't do too much in my undergraduate life to distinguish myself. My major interests at the time revolved around politics and various utopian ideals. Approaching graduation, I decided to go to law school. I think two things influenced me. One was a desire to do something that had the power to change things. The other was, believe it or not, The Paper Chase, which came out at the time.

I applied to all sorts of law schools. I got into the University of San Francisco and was going to go there and fulfill my junior-high ambitions. At the last minute, though, somebody fell asleep at the switch and let me into the University of Washington. A quick glance at private and public school tuition and I was on my way to Seattle in the fall of 1975.

Law school was a bit of a shock. While I liked the challenge, the classes, frankly, were not that interesting. That was not the fault of the professors; it was the subject matter. Shakespeare or Marxist Political Economy was just a lot more exciting than trover and assumpsit. Fortunately, I was able to work in a law office back in Illinois between my first and second years, and as a Rule 9 intern between my second and third years and all during my third year. I worked at a small firm just off Eastlake Avenue called, at that time, Sweet & Dussault. They actually let me try cases in district court in King and Snohomish counties. I lost my first trial and asked the partners whether I should pay the damages. They told me I was nuts. The point is that the experience of the actual practice of law inspired me to finish law school, which I did in 1978.

After law school I had a brief stint with a firm in Port Orchard, then headed over the mountains. I had several friends from law school who ended up in Wenatchee, and I visited there frequently. After spending three to four years in Seattle, I forgot what the sun looked like and discovered that I liked it a lot. I ended up in Ephrata in March of 1979 as a deputy prosecutor. My first day on the job was a Monday. The other two attorneys in the office were either in trial or gone that day. I learned there are usually a lot of people in jail needing arraignment on Mondays. There was one guy who had shot somebody over the weekend. His victim shot back and the defendant ended up in the hospital. It was my job to charge him, get a search warrant for the gun, arraign him in the hospital, and arrange for an interpreter because he didn't speak English. With the help of the secretaries I managed to do it all that day but was extremely nervous, to say the least. I broke the tape recorder that we used for search warrants. The next day I took the file into the prosecutor and told him what I had done. He looked at the file and tossed it back across the desk to me with the comment, "You filed it, you try it." Fortunately the guy pled guilty.

After three years in the prosecutor's office I was ready for something new. The trial experience was invaluable, however. In a small office you do it all, from DUIs and child support to felonies. I then moved on to Yakima to work at the firm that is now known as Lyon, Weigand & Gustafson. I have been there since January of 1982. I started there doing a little bit of everything, but then everybody did a little bit of everything back then. Over the years, my practice has focused on school law and litigation. There are eight attorneys in the firm.

In 2001 our office had a retreat to identify our goals for the coming years. One of mine was to become more involved in the Bar. Shortly after that retreat I received a call from a local attorney suggesting that I would be a good candidate for the Board of Governors. One could not ask for better timing, so I put my name in and I was unopposed.

I did not come onto the BOG with any agenda other than to help out. The first year on the BOG was in large part mostly a learning experience. My eyes were opened to the fact that there are a large number of dedicated attorneys serving on the BOG and on the numerous committees doing work that is aimed at benefiting the members, the practice of law, and the overall health of the justice system. After being "elected" to the BOG, I remember one local attorney commenting to the effect, "Is that like being on student council?" I've been meaning to get back to him to let him know that it is far from it. The things the BOG and the various committees do directly affect the practice of law. The next time somebody moans about some rule change or other thing that comes to pass, I want to remind him that the genesis of those changes often comes from a committee or the action of the BOG. Those who get involved usually have a lot to do with shaping those changes. So — get involved.

Over the years, I have been lamenting the loss of community that we used to have in the Bar statewide. It was smaller when I started — approximately 8,000 attorneys. Now that we have 28,000-plus attorneys, it is harder to keep that sense of community. However, I have found that being involved at the state level brings that sense of community back. When you start working with numerous attorneys around the state, suddenly everything seems smaller and a bit cozier again.

My eyes were also opened to the fact that the employees at the Bar office do a wonderful job. Everyone I have had contact with is very dedicated to providing service to the Bar in an efficient and cost-effective manner. If everyone could see what I have seen, no one would gripe about Bar dues again.

It has taken me awhile to get a sense of what I would want to accomplish on the BOG. Now that I have, unfortunately I am nearing the end of my tenure. What I would really like to see happen in the future is to get more people involved with the Bar and enthused about the Bar and the practice of law. Many lawyers do get involved in their communities, but I can tell you I think the bar (I mean "bar" in the sense of all of the attorneys involved in this profession) needs a shot in the arm also. We tend at times to project a certain amount of self-hatred, reflecting the negative stereotypes of attorneys in the public at large. Work with the Bar tends to help develop a sense of a shared mission and more pride in the profession, which should start to be reflected in how we project ourselves to the public.

When I first came to the BOG, I wasn't sure about the "diversity" seats. It all filtered through my Republican mind as so much "P.C." But I have come to believe that it is necessary for this state's Bar. The Bar is becoming much more diverse and also much more splintered. Everyone has his own "bar association" now, based on everything from ethnicity to practice areas. Nobody is going to talk to anyone else unless there is a mechanism to bring people together. I see membership on the BOG or on committees more of a duty now than some political plum or résumé builder, and, therefore, I see any complaint of "reverse discrimination" as inapplicable in this setting. When the BOG interviews people for these seats, I want to know what perspective they can add and how they can help bring more of the Bar together. (Nietzsche, when trying to find "the truth," would take wildly different perspectives to see what would happen — the Bar needs to do that too.) Getting everybody to the table to talk will actually start to smooth out the differences and increase the similarities. Everybody wins.

While on the BOG I have been on the Budget and Audit Committee, the Presidential Search Committee, and the Awards Committee.

In the personal department, I am married and have a stepson, stepdaughter, and daughter. Two of the children are grown up and out of the house and the third one is on her way. My hobbies are horseback riding and reading. I read anything that doesn't move, but it is mainly literature, philosophy, history, and politics. The last three books I read were A Nation Under Lawyers: How the Crisis in the Legal Profession Is Transforming American Society, by Harvard law professor Mary Ann Glendon; The Iliad; and After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, by Alasdair MacIntyre.

I can't think of anything else interesting. That's it.

Robert Boggs is in his final year as a member of the WSBA Board of Governors and can be reached at 509-248-7220 or rboggs@lyon-law.com.

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