The Trouble with Lawyers

Hoyt Zia

It is harder to find a group more maligned and loathed, if only in good fun, than lawyers. Perform a Google search for "lawyer jokes" and you will pull up 1.2 million websites; search "hate lawyers" and you will find 3 million. There comes a point, however, when the lawyer-bashing is no longer a joking matter.

Four hundred years ago Shakespeare wrote his famous line about killing all the lawyers first, but for most of those years no one seemed to take it seriously. More recently, some doctors have refused to treat lawyers and their families in protest of the rising costs of medical malpractice insurance which they blame on trial lawyers. Lawyer bashing and tort reform was a rallying cry for one campaign in last year's presidential race. Texas Congressman Tom DeLay widened the "hate lawyers" circle to include state and federal judges who failed to rule the way he wanted in the Terry Schiavo case and promised that they would have to answer for it.

In light of the recent killings of a Georgia state judge in his courtroom and the family of a federal judge in her Illinois home, DeLay's words were unquestionably irresponsible if not reprehensible. Appealing to the same constituent base from whose ranks came the extremists who not long ago gunned-down abortion-performing doctors and nurses outside their clinics and in their homes, his threat against the judges had the ominous tone of a call to action that could have tragic consequences. As if that were not bad enough, his Texas Congressional colleague, Senator John Cornyn, then had the appalling temerity to suggest that the judges brought the killings on themselves because of their "political" rulings.

So what's this got to do with the Hawaii business community? On the one hand, there is nothing wrong with poking fun at lawyers; most enjoy a good lawyer joke as much as anyone and recognize that it comes with the profession. On the other hand, it is a good time to step back from the unfortunate, escalating rhetoric that scapegoats lawyers as the cause of our country's woes. Truth be told, for all the hype about excessive jury awards, there are countless more examples of positive contributions lawyers have made to improve our personal lives, businesses, and communities. I spent nearly twenty years as a defense lawyer and an in-house counsel before moving to the management side of business, and while I have had to deal with nuisance lawsuits, they are insignificant compared to the lawsuits that have had the positive, desired effect of making business more accountable and quicker to respond to real concerns about consumer safety and product liability.

During each of its semi-annual pledge drives, Hawaii Public Radio has a "say something nice about a lawyer" segment which appears to tap into a wellspring of warm sentiments about lawyers. Given the climate of the times, the business community might want to emulate and expand that program lest lawyers literally become an endangered species.