December 2005

Professionalism Is a Noun

by Mark T. Patterson II

Professionalism is a noun. It is also like fine art. You know it when you see it. You also know it when it is absent. This led us in the WSBA Professionalism Committee to consider all kinds of ideas on how to enhance professionalism throughout the state. There has been a lot written about how we need more of it, but what about citing concrete examples? What if a lawyer carried out his or her practice in such a fashion that one day he or she was featured prominently in Bar News as an example of how to be?

Everyone agreed that when Bar News arrives, we first turn to the pages that ominously announce “Disciplinary Notices.” For those of you reading this, don’t try to deny it. You know who you are. We posed the following question: What if that section was preceded by something positive, a column heralding the lawyers who practiced “Random Acts of Professionalism”?

I suggested there are other methods of recognition.

Recently I was watching my son and his friends play with their action figures. When I was a kid I had a G.I. Joe. Well, “G.I.” now stands for gastrointestinal and has something to do with stress I have learned. Joe is a name for the average. The boys now want action figures that are supernatural, and their names reflect it. One was called “Maximum Carnage.”

Maximum Carnage. That could be the action figure name for some of the lawyers I have encountered over the years. I would not describe the maximum-carnage lawyer as professional. Instead, I have witnessed a quiet and methodical erosion of an entire family’s estate and emotional cohesion for the sake of conflict enhancement as opposed to conflict resolution. Professionalism: You know it when you see it, and you know when it is absent.

Somehow the bar article seemed too mundane, so I proposed the action figure approach. We could manufacture and distribute Chief Justice Gerry Alexander action figures, complete with robe and “gavel action arm.” How about Charlie Wiggins and Ken Masters sold as a matched set? Or perhaps a Gumby-like Snohomish County Prosecutor Mark Roe? We could accessorize with all those old cars he drives as a testament to the salary of the government lawyer. Perhaps Professor Lew Orland could be on everyone’s desk. We need only to make a few changes to the Yoda doll sold by the Star Wars franchise. All highly collectable, and they could sit in our offices as models of conduct for us to emulate. And the family-law lawyers would have something for the kids to play with.

This proposal was met with stares. We returned to a more traditional approach and decided to revamp the Bar News announcement.

At present, several persons are nominated monthly from an invitation in a small article in the FYI pages of Bar News. Then, when there are enough nominations, they show up in a one-inch column near the front of the publication, no doubt glossed over as we eagerly turn to the disciplinary notices. Somehow, we thought, this is not quite good enough. This is where the Bar comes in.

Think about the members of your community. Tell the Bar why they are great. Professionalism is a noun. You know it when you see it. Let’s make it commonplace by example. Advance Random Acts of Professionalism as opposed to random acts of carnage.

Write us about those people whose professional acts occur randomly as part of the everyday fabric of the job. We are focused on a factual recounting of the conduct of the members of the bar, written by the nominating member, describing how the subject did the right thing when he could have done the wrong thing. Was the member a professional when he or she could have created maximum carnage?

Send your nominations to Judy Berrett at the Bar office, judithb@wsba.org. Your nominee will receive a suitable-for-framing Creed of Professionalism and a certificate signed by your vigorous committee chair Wendie Wendt, and the satisfaction of seeing your brethren featured prominently for doing the right thing.

But you will not get an action figure. Wait until I chair this committee.  

Mark T. Patterson II has served as an attorney in private practice, as well as an arbitrator appointed by the Snohomish County Superior Court, primarily in the field of domestic relations law, and is the author of Washington Divorce Kit.