21 September 2000

I am taken by the theme of this year’s meeting. “Many voices, one calling.” Words appropriate both in the instant and broader perspective. It is right for the Missouri Bar to be sensitive to the concerns of the Mound City Bar. No serious thinking person can avoid the fact that, for our generation and probably for the next, bridging racial, gender and cultural gaps has been and will be one of our greatest needs. But the phrase, “many voices, one calling” goes much further.

Most of our religious traditions teach that one God made us all. A common creator, a common maintainer, of all peoples. Modern science teaches a bit more complicated, but none the less consistent theme. Fourteen billion years ago, and we cannot even guess how many light years away, an explosion of a common mass sent particles screaming across space, colliding and combining to form planets, and stars, and eventually us, here on earth.

Imagine the journey we have taken. By either perspective, religious or scientific, life is a miracle; self-consciousness is a miracle; that there are many voices, but that they all yearn for justice is a miracle. A miracle that holds our civilization together in a world changing before our very eyes.

As I look back at this past year, I am not surprised that it felt so busy for us at the Supreme Court. The Missouri Court Automation project moved from pilot sites to statewide rollout. The ‘Case Net’ feature that allows lawyers to check the status of their cases over the internet became an instant success. A survey of Boone County lawyers indicated that 86% regularly use this feature. The automation project was extended beyond lawyers and judges to a middle school in Fulton, Missouri, linking teachers to juvenile officers to the courts to help them all serve better the troubled youths in their care.

We worked to continue the development of drug courts statewide and to develop a more systematic and organized method of funding treatment costs.

We initiated two pilot projects and reexamined our role in the permanent placement of children who are in court custody.

We worked with the Missouri Bar and the legal aid offices across the state to help them reorganize and to establish a special statewide oversight committee. The purpose of the committee is to make sure that legal services are provided to the poor effectively and efficiently statewide and not just in certain geographic areas. I am particularly thankful for the unselfish efforts of our regional legal aid offices to put the greater good of the state above their individual interests in this important accomplishment.

We reorganized the structure of the Board of Bar Examiners and have appointed a full-time professional director to better monitor and control the technical operations of the Board, while maximizing the impact of practicing lawyers upon the bar examination and admission process as a whole.

We appointed a committee to examine various issues of jury reform. That committee’s report will be presented here tomorrow morning for comments from members of the bar.

We appointed a committee to study the building of regional justice centers in rural Missouri with the goal of allowing counties to consolidate detention and court facilities to save scarce resources. This committee’s final report will be distributed shortly and promises to be one of the most exciting and innovative projects we have undertaken.

We appointed a new committee to examine the accessibility of our court buildings for individuals who are disabled.

We asked a special task force from the ABA to review the operations of our Chief Disciplinary Counsel and our system of lawyer discipline. That task force has visited the state this past summer and will be making its recommendations shortly.

We witnessed the retirement of Ron Larkin as our State Court Administrator and the appointment of Mike Buenger, from South Dakota, to replace him.

We rejoiced in the appointment of four new appellate judges, Sherri Sullivan, Thomas Newton, George Draper, and Ron Holliger.

In all of these activities, we have been particularly blessed by the support of the judges and the lawyers of this state. Obviously, very little of this work could go on without your help in so many ways.

Perhaps the most interesting issue that was addressed in the past year was the proposal for the multidisciplinary practice of law. Should lawyers practice with non-lawyers, and if so, under what type of professional supervision? For the time being, the issue is dead. The Missouri Bar and the ABA rejected the proposal. But, no single issue so clearly focused our attention upon the changing marketplace for legal services and the role we play in it.

There can be no doubt that over our lifetime the practice of law has radically changed. We’ve seen the growth of global law firms with hundreds and hundreds of members, multi-million dollar contingent fees, and $90,000 a year starting salaries for first-year associates, all here in Missouri. Our practices are becoming more and more specialized and brutal efficiency is being forced upon us by clients and competitors, competitors both within and without the legal profession. In many ways, I am certain that we are providing our clients a higher quality of service for a lower relative cost than ever before. But at what price?

I cannot tell you how often I’ve heard the lament that “the practice of law just isn’t fun anymore”. Whether from big firm or small, rural or urban, everyone seems to say that they would rather have the practice the way it was 20 years ago, than the way it is now. Of course, I heard the same thing back in 1978, when I began to practice law and, of course, that comment misses the point as badly now as it did then.

We cannot return to times past any more than we can see with certainty into the future. What is certain is this is our time. It is here and now that we are members of the legal profession. It is here and now that we will make our marks as lawyers and judges. The question is not what the practice of law used to be, but what we will make it in the twenty-first century. The question calls us to strip away the distractions to focus upon what is the heart and soul of the practice of law. What is the one calling for our many voices? The heart and soul of our practice is not efficiency. It is not making money. Our one calling must always remain Justice First.

I don’t mean to say that the economics of the practice can be ignored. They cannot. Lawyers must earn a living commensurate with their skill and work. If we cannot provide value relative to our cost, both actual value and perceived value, our clients will find solutions outside of the traditional legal system. To assume otherwise is simply naïve. Whatever our type of practice, these are realities that will drive us, as they have driven every other segment of our economy. The beauty and the challenge of a free market system is that no one is guaranteed success; we each must earn it day by day.

We cannot bury our heads in the sand and refuse to keep pace with the world around us. In our heads, we must continually strive to be competitive and efficient. But, our hearts must be different. They must yearn for and serve justice. Our greatest danger as lawyers is if we confuse these two demands.

Many of you have known this all along. Some may never understand. In my remarks today, I cannot even begin to scratch the surface of the many implications of this one calling. But I would like to discuss one concern.

The practice of law has always been a hard business. Whether in lawsuits, negotiations, or other capacities, our clients demand and need results. We must advise them not just with accuracy, but with wisdom, as well. We must fight their battles. We must carry their dignity, their livelihoods, their families, and sometimes even their liberty and their lives on our shoulders.

A lawyer cannot be weak and cannot be timid. Justice Roberts wrote:

Evil men are rarely given power; they take it from better men to whom it had been entrusted.

A lawyer must be hard and strong enough to win the fight for truth and justice.

But we cannot lose focus. Our calling is to our clients’ just rights under the law, not necessarily their desires or our own success. I am afraid that in these days of intense competition for clients and fees that more damage results from trying too hard, than not hard enough, especially if the goal of truth and justice is lost along the way.

We often joke of the famous line attributed to J. P. Morgan that:

I don’t know as I want a lawyer to tell me what I cannot do. I hire him to tell me how to do what I want to do.

But when we forget that our calling is Justice First, we become easy prey not only to bad “means” but bad “ends” as well. It is heartbreaking to hear a lawyer describe his misbehavior by saying:

I was doing this simply to win, to be successful . . . that’s what this is all about.

When we focus upon truth and justice, our ethical rules of practice are welcome guideposts to help us along the way. When, instead, we focus solely on our own success and that of our clients, regardless of truth and justice, then the ethical rules become obstacles and harm is sure to follow.

We must remember that we serve more than ourselves and our clients. We serve truth and justice. There is no room for deception or corner cutting. As a reassurance to most, but a warning to some, take heed from the words of Oliver Wendell Holmes:

Truth is tough. It will not break like a bubble at a touch; no, you may kick it about like a football all day, but it will be round and full at evening.

The day to day pressures of the marketplace will have an impact upon the way in which we practice law. We must welcome and seek more efficient and value driven ways to serve. But, we must always keep our focus clear. We are members of a profession like none other. Whether we represent plaintiffs or defendants, prosecution or accused, corporations or individuals of any race, religion, gender or creed, we don’t do it simply to win and success isn’t what this is all about.

From across time and space our many voices are called to justice. Justice knows no side. It follows truth wherever it falls. It cannot be measured in dollars and cents or temporary acclaim. Lawyers can always make a living, but only if they seek truth and justice can they have a life worthy of their calling. Judge Learned Hand put it this way,

…nothing is more commendable and fair than that a person should lay aside all else and seek truth; not to preach what he might find; and surely not to try to make his views prevail; but to find satisfaction in the search itself.