TO-WIT: NO TRICK PONIES
For more than a quarter of a century now, I have been a deft and erudite analyst of the most significant events in the legal profession. While it is true that sometimes I’ve missed the boat, (asserting a few years ago that the legal profession was about to rise up in a spasm of self-righteousness and outlaw the contingency fee comes to mind), this time I think you’ll agree I’m truly on to something.
As a general practitioner, it used to be that in the course of a single professional day I might see clients whose woes spanned the gamut from divorce to bankruptcy to grievances arising under the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, and as a general practitioner, I handled them all by myself. Although I knew that there were specialists out there, I would have never referred a case to one. I always felt that lawyers specialized in one area of the law only because they had difficulty trying to remember more than one statute of limitations.
Nowadays even I must concede that specialists have their place. Unfortunately though, even such simplistic subjects as deed preparation have become some kind of cryptic art form. Be it real estate, estates and trusts, taxation, whatever,, these specialists know their respective specialties far better than I know my social Security number, and as a result, they garner work much the same way that bunnies garner, well, bunnies.
Me, I don’t mind. I am fortunate that over the years I have gathered up a nice coterie of clientele whose lives have been miserable enough, thank God, to provide all of my children with wonderful educations. Those loyal denizens of the doldrums would never turn their backs on the years of history we have had together in order to seek the services of someone who knows what he or she is doing. The way their lives have evolved, they figure they can be no more bereft with me than with a $300 an hour colleague, and I can do it a lot cheaper to boot.
It is undeniably true that with specializing comes greater knowledge, and with greater knowledge comes greater success. The problem, however, is that with such profoundly successful specialists like Johnny Cochran and Alan Dershowitz and F. Lee Bailey getting so much media attention, the public has understandably come to believe that when a lawyer is successful, criminals walk the streets, corporations avoid taxes and politicians remain in office.
It is this perspective that more than anything else has cast our professional reputations adrift upon an ebbing tide. Our collective esteem is suffering just because there are a few lawyers out there who are really good at what they do.
I believe the public would be much more respectful of us if only they knew that from time to time we do screw things up, and as a concomitant result, our clients do go to jail, do incur huge fines, do pay their lawful debts. In an effort then to restore our profession to its former glory, I have scoured our professional registries looking for those unsung specialists whose exploits have wrought disaster. I believe that when thus exposed to the daylight of truth, they may serve as the standard bearers by which we can carry to the public the message that sometimes clients get just exactly what they deserve, and that usually they have a hard-working and dedicated lawyer to thank for it.
POLLY WAMPUS – Although now almost completely forgotten. Polly was a high-profile criminal defense lawyer of the 1930s, who at the height of her career said to her most notorious client, “Lighten up, John. Jeez, go to a movie or something, huh.”
CARMINE “DOGGY” DeBONE – A lawyer specializing in the UCC, he argued that “non-conforming goods” meant any products his client Vinnie was actually expected to pay for. When Nunzio finally realized that’s why Vinnie wasn’t going to pay him, he disposed of both Vinnie and Carmine in a bulk sales transaction.
BRYON “OOPS” MANDELBRED – Early 20th-century matrimonial lawyer, he believed that equitable distribution between spouses was a matter to be settled not by lawyers in a court of law but rather by weapons on a field of honor. His success rate might have been greatly improved had he elected to represent a husband once in a while.
HEZEKIAH GUANO – First lawyer in the commonwealth to hold himself out as an environmental specialist, he is perhaps best known for his lobbying efforts to persuade appellate-court judges to not write so many opinions.
GENEVIEVE POLTROON – A bankruptcy specialist, she could not abide the notion that her clients were avoiding their lawful debts. Accordingly she jacked up her fees high enough to pay off her clients’ creditors in full. As homage to her noble example, bankruptcy practitioners still emulate her practice in part even today.
© 1997, S. Sponte, Esq.