September 2005

The Board's Work

by Lindsay Thompson

Bellingham, July 29-30, 2005

The Board’s July meeting is usually a deck-clearing exercise, to get ready for a short meeting in September and the change of leadership. So they work in an extra day for planning. That was the 28th this year.

Friday, they convened after an executive session and with extra chairs around the table: Ellen Conedera Dial, who becomes president-elect in September; and newly elected governors Liza Burke, Eric de los Santos, Kristal Wiitala Knutson, Doug Lawrence, and Sal Mungia.

They approved a bale of committee chairs and members for ’05-06, and dug into 168 pages of work from the Court Rules and Procedures Committee. Chair David Swartling, who thrives in a job that would drive many barking mad, walked the Board through proposed changes and updates to rules of appellate procedure and appeals from limited jurisdiction courts; the criminal rules for superior and district courts, the mandatory arbitration rules, and a miscellany of others. They voted to support state legislation to expand the Washington Law Against Discrimination, and determined the amount we can take off our membership fees under the Keller case (that’s a U.S. Supreme Court decision that lets bar members opt out of political activity by bar associations). You’ll be able to check that box come the new year. They approved a set of rules to govern the operation of the Character and Fitness Committee, which will now become a board. It deals with applicants for admission who are thought to have red flags in their history, and sorts those out. Governor Mark Johnson, who led the effort, argued there was too little predictability and uniformity in the handling of similar situations. And at lunch with members of the Whatcom County Bar Association, they honored lawyer Deborra Garrett with a Local Hero Award. It seems the FBI took an interest in who was checking a book on Osama bin Laden out of the Deming Library and tried to subpoena the records. Garrett filed a motion and a brief and the FBI went away. President Ward presented a plaque and those present gave her a standing ovation.

I’ve tried over the years to report on rule changes, but on this scale it’s almost impossible to do effectively. Watch for their publication in The Advance Sheets — you get to see the interlineations and reasoning in detail.

Barbara Harper, who directs WSBA’s Lawyer Services Program, gave the BOG a report on its work. A recent survey found members like the range of services and help the department offers, but not enough members know it is there. That came as a surprise, because the things the program does are so useful to lawyers. Advice on software, mental health, thinking through ethical conundrums — that’s the daily bread and butter. So watch for more on such things in Bar News.

The Board also heard a debate on what to do, if anything, about Initiative 336, the medical malpractice initiative proposed by WSTLA. At their last meeting the BOG voted to oppose the medical association’s Initiative 330, finding it presents threats to things like the right to a jury trial. 336, by contrast, deals mostly with changes in the practice and regulation of medicine, which is pretty much outside the purposes of WSBA as set out in General Rule 12. -WSTLA President John Connelly, Washington Defense Trial Lawyers President Jeff Frank, and Governor Randy Gordon all phoned in their discussion. Each side agreed WSBA hasn’t got a dog in this fight and ought not to get involved. The BOG’s discussion was mainly over whether to oppose 336 in a sort of plague-on-all-your-initiatives statement, or take the GR 12-no-position option. No position won, 10-4.

Before lunch, the Board took time to recall two of WSBA’s great characters, former executive director G. Edward Friar, who served 1971-81; and Tacoma lawyer and former state senator Neil Hoff. Hoff, who died at 84, was the only person ever to serve two terms on the Board of Governors. After that feat, the BOG changed the Bylaws. Friar, a Tennessee secretary of state and gubernatorial candidate in the 1950s, died at 88 in Florida after 24 years as the most famous footnote in WSBA’s annual budgets. On his retirement, the Board, seeking to make up for what was felt to have been underpayment of Friar given his services, awarded him a pension of $48,000 a year. As a governor at that time once said, “Who knew he would live so long?”

After lunch the Board heard a presentation from a delegation of minority bar association presidents, including the Vietnamese, South Asian, Loren Miller, Asian, Northwest Indian, and GLBT bar associations. They told the Board their members felt slighted, mocked, and generally disrespected by “The Board’s Work” account of the BOG’s June meeting, as well as some comments by a member of the Board in an e-mail that gained wide circulation. Both touched upon the election of an at-large governor and a report by the co-chairs of the WSBA Diversity Committee. They also took issue with comments by the editor in the July “Editor’s Page” on governance and diversity in WSBA.

The bar leaders told the Board they felt the incidents underscore the need for more contact between their organizations and the Board of Governors; more support for the WSBA diversity advocate’s efforts; more diversity training for lawyers; and a written statement by the Board disavowing the governor’s comments. They also felt an unedited response to the editor, of equal length, should be provided.

An hour’s discussion followed and a general agreement evolved that WSBA’s diversity efforts have a ways to go, and that should be worked on. The BOG will consider how to respond most effectively and appropriately to the groups’ requests and respond promptly, President Ward said.

Member and Community Relations Director Judy Berrett told the Board Casemaker, a legal research service WSBA is acquiring for free use by members, is in testing and should be up and running soon.

The Board plans to act in September on recommendations by a task force to lock in informal rotations for candidates for the Board of Governors in several congressional districts, the better to try and ensure a little more geographic diversity and to try and balance out the influence of big population centers vs. the rest of the districts.

Saturday morning the Board took up a question from the Supreme Court over whether the huge rewrite of the Rules of Professional Conduct now before them also need acres of illustrative comments. Ellen Dial, who chaired the rewrite, said yes, the comments are needed to give members guidance on interpreting the rules, since some are unique to Washington and others are ABA-based rules that come with their own comments. The Board decided to let Dial deal with the issue with the Court.

The Board also considered and approved a balanced budget for WSBA for 2005-06, one that keeps an eight percent general reserve and another eight percent for the costs of relocating the WSBA offices in 2007. They approved membership fee increases of a couple of percent a year for the 2007-09 period, to keep up with inflation.

Finally, the Board approved a rule for consideration by the Supreme Court that would require lawyers to disclose whether they have professional liability insurance. The prevailing view was that this is a consumer-protection issue. A minority view was that it’s also a back-door way of trying to eventually require liability insurance for all members, something the membership pretty decisively shot down about 15 years ago.

Next meeting’s in Seattle in September. Details on the website, www.wsba.org.