BULLETINS FROM ALOHA

Lawyers Who Fall in Love  --  Agnes Peterson from St. Helens appeared at a Washington County Bar Association meeting many years back to announce she was running for the Oregon State Bar Board of Governors for Region Four.  She opened her pitch by announcing genuinely that she ".....loved lawyers."   Her statement has always fascinated me.  She meant it.  It is so uncommon.  And it should always be able to be true for all of us.  We should love our brothers and sisters in this difficult profession. 

For me, I love the profession and I love and admire other lawyers.  Some of them don't love me back.  My education began shortly after I returned from a short vacation and my stable-mate reported that "...his client" needed some help while I was away and announced to me what "he" was going to do for "his client".   Wait a durn minute.  This is my client that I asked my mate to cover for me while I was gone.  My mate had inappropriately taken possession of my client for himself by virtue of this temporary cover for me.  Odd.

Several years later during a romantic alliance with a special person, I referred her divorcing mother to a local lawyer, of whom I had respect, and all went well.  Later, I fired a divorcing professional client because he was laundering money in an effort to hide some of his assets from his other half.   I went to some effort to arrange for his alternative representation with this same local divorce lawyer.  About a year later I got an odd call from her.  It didn't take a Philadelphia lawyer to realize this local lawyer was turning on me in this matter that I had gratuitously arranged for her to handle for this client whom I had fired (and who still owed me lotsa money).  Odd.  Why would she go out of her way to do bad for me when I had just gone out of my way to do good for her twice?

My final story in the me'lange (though I could present quite a few others) was again a local lawyer (who I socialized with and served with in a professional organization)  who specialized in something I knew how to do, but didn't like.  So, he was first on my list to refer those sorts of cases to and I did so often since there were many clients in this sort of pickle.  Lo, and behold, on an important client he also turned and began an aggressive advocacy against me for no apparent reason I could discern.

Now I can understand the give and take of normal advocacy, but even there, at the end of the case we should be able to at least have coffee together sometime, in lieu of meetings at the old Green Meadows where an even better social lubricant was available.  What I don't understand at all is why a lawyer does not love a lawyer who is referring, without condition, good clients to that lawyer.  Even more strange is why the turn and facility to insert the metal fang in the back.  Where does that get anybody in our profession?  If anybody has some insight here, I would love to have it.  In the meantime, I will continue to love this dysfunctional profession housing dysfunctional judges abusing turncoat lawyers.    Well, let me rethink this love business.......................