Alabama State Bar

Birmingham's 'Miss Nina,' Beddow tapped for Alabama Lawyer's Hall of Fame
By Eric Velasco, The Birmingham News
April 29, 2012

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama -- Pioneering lawyer, civil-rights champion and political leader Nina Miglionico will be inducted this week into the Alabama Lawyer's Hall of Fame, joining four honorees including two other lawyers from Birmingham.

Miglionico, who was the longest-practicing woman lawyer in the state when she died in 2009 at age 95, also was the first female on the Birmingham City Council and later was its first female president.

Also to be inducted to the lawyer hall of fame are Charles Morgan Jr. and Roderick Beddow Sr., who practiced law in Birmingham; John McKinley; and William D. Scruggs Jr.

Plaques honoring them will be unveiled during a ceremony Friday in Montgomery.
The annual induction posthumously honors Alabama lawyers who have made significant contributions to the legal profession, according to a release from the Alabama State Bar.

"These individuals have demonstrated a lifetime of achievement that exemplifies the bar's motto, 'Lawyers render service,'" Samuel Rumore Jr., former state bar president and selection committee chairman, said in a statement.

Accomplishments of the 2012 inductees include:

Female lawyers were so rare when Miglionico (1913-2009) earned her law degree in 1936, someone had to scratch out the word "he" on her law license and write in "she."
She practiced law for 73 years, never officially retiring before her death.

The Birmingham native was elected to the inaugural city council when Birmingham's government was changed from the old commission format to the current mayor-council system.

"Miss Nina," as she was known, served on the council from 1963 to 1985, and was its president from 1978 to 1981.

Her stance in favor of civil rights, including her push to change the city's segregation laws, led to incidents in which a bomb was placed under her house in 1965 and a cross was burned on her front yard in 1974, according to the Encyclopedia of Alabama.

Morgan (1930-2009) was another social reformer and lawyer. Litigation filed by Morgan and another lawyer forced the radical reapportionment of the Alabama Legislature in 1962 based on the one-person, one-vote concept, increasing the political power of blacks and urban areas.

But he may be best known for speaking out against Birmingham's political, business and religious leaders the day after the infamous 1963 fatal bombing at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church.

The speech "got him run out of his hometown," the New York Times said in an obituary after Morgan died at age 78.

His legal arguments led federal courts to dismantle segregation laws in the 1960s, making him a role model for many civil rights lawyers, according to the state bar. His legacy led a group of restaurateurs to name their "Chuck's Fish" outlets in Tuscaloosa and Birmingham after Morgan.

Beddow (1889-1978) was considered one of the state's best criminal defense lawyers and mentor to generations of criminal lawyers, the state bar's release said. He once was president of the Birmingham Bar Association and Alabama State Bar. He also president of Lions Club International 1933-1934.

McKinley (1780-1852) was the first Alabamian to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. After starting his law practice in 1818, he was elected as a state representative from Madison County in 1820, 1831 and 1836, the state bar release said.

He served in the U.S. Senate from 1826 to 1831 and the U.S. House of Representatives from 1833 to 1835, before returning to the Senate in 1837. McKinley was appointed to the nation's high court in 1838.

Scruggs (1943-2001) was a small-town lawyer whose legal skills were sought out by multinational corporations, the state bar release said.

A state bar award memorializing his service to the legal profession has been named in honor of the Ft. Payne lawyer, a former president of the organization.
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5 to be inducted in Alabama Lawyer's Hall of Fame
The Associated Press
April 30, 2012

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — Pioneering lawyer, civil-rights champion and political leader Nina Miglionico will be inducted this week into the Alabama Lawyer's Hall of Fame, joining four honorees including two other lawyers from Birmingham.

Also to be inducted to the lawyer hall of fame are Charles Morgan Jr. and Roderick Beddow Sr., who practiced law in Birmingham; John McKinley; and William D. Scruggs Jr.

Plaques honoring them will be unveiled during a ceremony Friday in Montgomery.

The annual induction posthumously honors Alabama lawyers who have made significant contributions to the legal profession, according to a release from the Alabama State Bar.

Accomplishments of the 2012 inductees include:

Female lawyers were so rare when Miglionico (1913-2009) earned her law degree in 1936, someone had to scratch out the word "he" on her law license and write in "she."

She practiced law for 73 years, never officially retiring before her death.

The Birmingham native was elected to the inaugural city council when Birmingham's government was changed from the old commission format to the current mayor-council system.

"Miss Nina," as she was known, served on the council from 1963 to 1985, and was its president from 1978 to 1981.

But he may be best known for speaking out against Birmingham's political, business and religious leaders the day after the infamous 1963 fatal bombing at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church.

The speech "got him run out of his hometown," the New York Times said in an obituary after Morgan died at age 78.

Scruggs (1943-2001) was a small-town lawyer whose legal skills were sought out by multinational corporations, the state bar release said.

A state bar award memorializing his service to the legal profession has been named in honor of the Ft. Payne lawyer, a former president of the organization.
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Six Birmingham-area students named winners in Law Day contest by Alabama State Bar
By Eric Velasco, The Birmingham News
April 30, 2012

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama -- Students from Advent Episcopal School in Birmingham swept the first- through third-place awards in the 2012 poster contest for the Alabama State Bar's Law Day competition.

Three other students from Birmingham-area schools also were honored for essays they wrote about this year's competition theme, "No Courts, No Justice, No Freedom," according to a release from the state bar.

In the K-3 poster category, Advent student Sasha Foreman won first place, Lily Geisen won second place and Simms Berdy placed third.

In the essay contest, Read Mills of Spain Park High School won first place for the Grades 10-12 category, while Jasmine Bolden of Spain Park High won third place in that category.

Hayden Desmond, of Hilltop Montessori School in Birmingham won second place for her essay in the Grades 7-9 category.

Those students, along with the winners from other schools, will be honored at a special ceremony Tuesday at the Alabama Supreme Court in Montgomery. They also will be luncheon guests at the State Bar Center.

All winners will receive engraved gold medals and certificates. Winners in the poster contests will receive U.S. Savings Bonds with the face value of $125 for first place, $100 for second place and $75 for third place.

Awards for the essay contests -- as well as separate categories for social media on Facebook or Twitter -- are bonds of $200 for first place, $150 for second place and $100 for third place.

In addition, each winner's school will receive a certificate, and the sponsoring teacher will get $25 for classroom use.

Nearly 440 students entered the contest. This year's Law Day theme was timely. The court system faces the latest in a series of state funding cuts unless the Legislature approves additional revenue. Court officials say their operations already have been cut to the bone, and more reductions would devastate Alabama's justice system.

In the student Law Day contest, participants in each category had to express how the court system should be a funding priority, and how diminished access to justice affects everyone, the state bar said in a release.

"I cannot think of a more relevant theme given today's climate," Jim Pratt III, president of the state bar, said in a statement. "In my opinion, this is an excellent way for these students to learn about the importance of being engaged citizens and why our courts are so important."

This was the first year the state bar had included social media categories to the contest. Students in those categories either had to create a theoretical Facebook page about the role the courts play in government, or "tweet" about the historical role the courts have played in society.
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California Bar Considering Practical Skills Mandate for New Lawyers
By Sam Favate, The Wall Street Journal
April 30, 2012

Most academic departments struggle with the debate over whether to make their programs more practical or more scholarly. Now, the State Bar of California is thinking about forcing the hand of law schools.

The California bar is considering whether to impose a practical skills training requirement on lawyers applying for admission, which would mean applicants would have to attain a level of hands-on training before practicing, the National Law Journal reported.

How California resolves the issue could affect the legal profession and law schools around the country, since California’s is the largest bar in the U.S.

Ideas under review include internship requirements, a mentoring program, completion of a skills-training course, or a year-long class for third-year law students that covers lawyering skills.

Among academics, even those who support practical skills training don’t like the idea of a mandate. “I don’t like the idea of the state bar saying, ‘This is what you should be teaching…’ Law schools should decide what they teach. Not the bar,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California, Irvine School of Law.

“This is not a new issue,” said State Bar of California Executive Director Joseph Dunn. “The debate about practical skills training has been long-standing within legal academia. But because of their paralysis, in the last few years the debate has started to seep into the regulatory bodies at the state level that govern the admission to the practice of law,” he told NLJ.

Protecting consumers of legal services is the job of the bar, according to Dunn, and ensuring new lawyers are prepared to represent their clients’ interests is a part of that, he said.

The California bar’s task force is set to issue recommendations in December 2013.
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ABA's Bill Robinson urges more court funding
By BENNETT J. LOUDON, Rochester Democrat & Chronicle (N.Y.)
April 23, 2012

American Bar Association President Bill Robinson called Monday for more funding for state courts and outlined his group’s efforts to increase diversity in the legal profession.

In a meeting with the editorial board of the Democrat and Chronicle, Robinson, from Florence, Ky., said access to justice “begins with the need for adequately funded courts all over this country.”

The lack of funding means there will be fewer clerks and court workers to process cases, less money for legal assistance to people who can’t afford it, and fewer courtroom hours.

Court funding was cut last year in 42 of 50 states, including New York. Meanwhile, more new cases will be filed in New York courts than in the entire federal court system,” Robinson said.

In New York, court funding was cut by $170 million in the 2011-12 state budget. The new budget cut $20 million more but includes $53 million for judicial raises and legal services, doubling the current amount. “It is a crisis,” Robinson said. “The courts are simply not understood, not appreciated by all levels of society.” There’s no one there in the legislature standing up for the need for more adequate funding for the courts,” he said.

While the Bar Association provides a great deal of pro bono legal work, volunteer efforts will never fill the need, Robinson said. In Monroe County, about 1,200 of the 2,000 lawyers in the local association actively volunteer their time and expertise, said Bryan Hetherington, president of the group.

Robinson also said the ABA is working hard to increase the number of minority lawyers. The association has increased the number of minorities on committees and in leadership positions. Locally, The Monroe County Bar Association is also committed to that effort. The group has a summer clerkship program for minority law students. And a committee appointed to recommend a new conflict defender for the county is headed by an African-American lawyer, he said.

“We, as an association, are committed to improve an unacceptable situation,” he said.
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Is Legal Profession Shakeout Long Overdue? Ratio of Lawyers to Americans Is 1 to 257
By Debra Cassens Weiss, ABAJournal.com
April 19, 2012

The legal profession may be a victim of its own success.

From 1940 to 1960, lawyers were losing ground as their inflation-adjusted income eroded, Bloomberg News reports, citing information from an upcoming book on law firm economics.

The situation changed in recent years, with revenues at large firms outpacing inflation, the story says. If combined revenues at the 50-top grossing firms had increased at the rate of inflation from 1985 to 2010, the total revenue number would be $6.9 billion in 2010. In reality, it was $48.4 billion.

Bloomberg interviewed Michael Trotter, an Atlanta corporate lawyer who wrote the upcoming book, Declining Prospects. “Hourly rates just went up and up,” Trotter told the wire service. According to Bloomberg, “fancy lawyers charged whatever the market would bear.”

The Bloomberg article attributes problems in the legal profession to a variety of factors. “There’s more at work here than the Great Recession,” the story says. “Inept management and the weakness of the partnership model have also played crucial, if lesser known, roles. And as unsettling as this shakeout will be for employees of many large law firms, it’s one that is overdue.”

Law firms made themselves vulnerable to economic downturns by “bulking up so aggressively,” the story says. “Partners at many firms failed to appreciate that all those salaried employees needed to be paid every month, whether or not new business is coming in the door,” Bloomberg says.

The article offers another statistic to illustrate the surplus of lawyers. In 1950, there was one lawyer for every 709 Americans. Today there is one lawyer for every 257 Americans.

"We have a lot of decrepit bridges in this country, factories that could use modernization, and clean-energy technologies that need inventing," the article concludes. "It’s a moment for more engineers and entrepreneurs, not more lawyers," Bloomberg says, echoing an observation made by Justice Antonin Scalia.
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Law School Student Debt Exceeds $100,000 Amid Jobs Shortage
By Josh Block and Janet Lorin, Bloomberg News
April 18, 2012

Law school graduates are leaving college with an average of $100,433 in debt at a time when new lawyers outnumber legal jobs, according to a survey from U.S. News & World Report.

Graduates of California Western School of Law have an average of more than $153,000 in loans, the most among law schools nationwide, according to U.S. News, which surveyed 195 law schools.

This decade, U.S. law schools will produce four times as many new lawyers as there will be jobs for them, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The number of people taking the Law School Admission Test, or LSAT, required for admission to most law schools, dropped 24 percent over the past two years.

Average tuition and fees for private law schools have jumped 73 percent since 1999 to $35,743 in 2009, an American Bar Association survey shows.

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New rules aim for more affordable legal help in Alabama
By Eric Velasco, The Birmingham News
April 16, 2012

Modifying child support, fighting child custody changes and other legal matters should become more affordable for many under new rules allowing people to hire lawyers for limited purposes such as drafting court documents, Alabama State Bar officials said.

"A person might pay a couple hundred dollars for a lawyer to prepare a pleading, versus the thousands it might take to pay the lawyer to handle the whole case," said Henry Callaway, a Mobile lawyer and chairman of the state bar committee that drafted the "limited-scope representation" rules.

The rules change, approved in late March by the Alabama Supreme Court, is designed to make access to justice more affordable for low- and middle-income residents, said Jim Pratt, the Alabama State Bar president.

"Allow(ing) limited-scope representation in civil matters is part of the legal profession's drive, in collaboration with the courts, to clear obstacles to legal representation," Pratt said in a statement.

The change also is expected to open new financial opportunities for solo and small-firm practitioners, who make up two-thirds of the state bar's membership, Pratt said.

A recent state bar survey showed 37 percent of the state's lawyers earned $50,000 or less in 2010, an increase over 1996 when 24 percent of lawyers reported that pay level.

Limited-scope representation rules took effect March 26 but still are being implemented. A free Web training session for lawyers is set for Wednesday.

At least 42 states have some version of limited-scope representation, according to the American Bar Association. Callaway said he saw the need in Alabama while doing pro bono, or free, legal work for low-income people.

"Pro bono only helps the lowest of the low incomes," he said, because eligibility is based on income level.

"It doesn't help those with middle incomes," Callaway said. "There are a lot of middle-income people out there who need legal help but can't afford to pay a couple thousand dollars for a lawyer to handle the whole case."

Although it's not suitable for all civil litigation, Family Court and small claims cases are the areas it is most likely to be applied, Callaway said. Especially when children are involved, divorce issues can linger for years or even decades after the marriage ends. The legal bill mounts with each modification or each fight to get a court order enforced, such as child support payments, Callaway said.

"This allows them to pay a smaller fee to have a lawyer only draft a pleading and tell them how to proceed," he said. "Then they can file it and pursue the case themselves."

Limited scope

Examples of limited-scope representation include hiring the lawyer to:

Act as a consultant on the law, evidence preparation and/or courtroom procedure as needed during the case.
Handle only one aspect of a case in-court, such as a hearing to set child support.
Only prepare court documents.
Conduct only the most complicated research and evidence-gathering.

Lawyers would file a notice of limited representation with the court, then file a notice of completion when the specific job is done.

They are not required to sign the court documents they prepare in these cases, but must note that a licensed state bar member helped write it under the limited-scope representation rules.

The benefits are universal, Callaway said. People have a more affordable pathway to justice and access to better legal advice than if they had tried to handle the case on their own, he said.

Solo and small-firm lawyers will get more business, broken down into manageable chunks as they juggle their caseloads, he said. And judges get better-prepared litigants and court filings, he said.

"We've seen it work in other states," Callaway said. "We think it will be a win-win-win here."
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Alabama's legal profession hit hard by recession, survey says
By Eric Velasco, The Birmingham News
April 15, 2012

Income was down for many lawyers and new law school graduates were having a tougher time finding jobs in 2010, both signs of the recession's effect on the legal profession, an Alabama State Bar survey shows.

Nearly 40 percent of survey respondents made less than $50,000 in 2009, versus 24 percent in 1998, according to the survey, conducted in 2010 and released this month.

The rate of lawyers making more than $100,000 also dropped. In 2010, 28 percent of respondents reported that pay level, down from 40 percent in 1998, the survey showed.
"The legal profession is a service industry," said Jim Pratt, a Birmingham lawyer who is state bar president. "If clients are cutting back in terms of their budget because of the economy, it has a domino effect on the law firms that represent them."

Among unemployed lawyers, 14 percent said they were unable to get a job after law school. The survey found only 31 percent of responding lawyers' firms planned to hire lawyers in 2011 who had less than three years of experience.

John Carroll, dean of Cumberland School of Law, said the job market was tougher for graduates then, but numbers for 2011 graduates show improvement.

"It is something that all law schools are concerned about, and they work hard at placing their graduates," he said. "Hopefully, it bottomed out in 2010 and it will be even better for 2012 graduates."

The survey was randomly sent to 2,000 state bar members and completed by 427, according to the report by the state bar's Practice Management Assistance Program.

Respondents' demographics were similar to bar membership, the survey report said. The margin of error was plus or minus 4.5 percentage points.

The report provides a snapshot of earnings and billings in the legal profession in Alabama in 2010. The survey found:

About 74 percent were employed full time, while nearly 5 percent were unemployed but seeking work in the law profession.
Nearly 42 percent were solo practitioners and some 62 percent worked in firms with five or fewer lawyers. Nearly 12 percent worked for large firms of 100 or more lawyers.
Nearly 23 percent of lawyers made less than $25,000 in 2009. Another 21 percent made between $50,000 and $75,000, the median salary range in the survey. Incomes above $250,000 were reported by nearly 5 percent.
Income increased 2008-09 for 39 percent of respondents. Nearly one-third reported a decrease in income while a little more than one-fourth reported stagnant income.
Generally, lawyers were better paid at larger firms, the survey found. But among the nine respondents reporting income of $350,000 or more, four were solo practitioners. Three were from firms of 100 or more lawyers.

Pratt said the survey may help the public better understand the realities of the legal profession.

"The impression many people have that lawyers make a ton of money or are only in it for the money is exposed as being not true," he said. "Much of the legal profession really can be described as small businesses. The overwhelming majority of our lawyers either work for themselves or firms that can be described as modest."

While income was down, the hourly rates that lawyers charge was up, the survey found. The median rate in the 1998 survey was $125 per hour, while the median hourly rate range found for 2009 was $150-$174.

Pratt attributes the downturn in overall income and employment figures mostly to the economy. It has shown signs of improvement since the 2010 survey, he said.

"But it's slower than I would like it to be," he said. "Things are still sluggish."
Another factor is the number of lawyers also has more than doubled since 1986, when the state bar had 8,000 members. The current membership of 16,599 has increased by more than one-third since 1998, when the state bar had 12,411 members.

But when the firms hire inexperienced associates these days, they are paying better salaries, the survey found. The median starting salary for all hires in 1998 was $33,000. The median salary range for 2009 hires was $75,000-$100,000.

The survey also showed that a substantial number of lawyers do not get the benefits most workers take for granted.

Nearly 60 percent did not get employer-provided individual health insurance, while 65 percent did not did not get family coverage through work. Four in 10 had no paid vacation and nearly half did not get paid sick leave.

Nearly 4 in 10 lawyers reported they had no funded retirement plan at work. Perhaps as a result, 47 percent of respondents said they do not plan to retire.

But elite lawyers still enjoy perks such as client entertainment expense accounts (27 percent) a car or vehicle allowance (15 percent) and paid club memberships (8 percent).
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Florida justices say no to out-of-state lawyers
The Associated Press
April 12, 2012

The Florida Supreme Court is saying no to letting out-of-state lawyers provide free legal service following natural disasters.
The justices rejected the proposed Florida Bar rule by a 6-1 vote Thursday.
The majority justices wrote they had concerns about how such a rule would apply but offered no further explanation.
Justice Barbara Pariente dissented, arguing there would have been sufficient safeguards. She noted the Supreme Court would have been able to declare if an emergency requiring out-of-state help existed.
The justices also rejected a proposal that would have allowed the bar to post rule amendments on its website instead of printing them in The Florida Bar News.
The high court, instead, required the bar to do both. Pariente and Chief Justice Charles Canady dissented.
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Sue Me? Not A Chance This Year
by ALAN GREENBLATT, National Public Radio
April 12, 2012

If you feel like suing somebody, you'd better be patient.

Due to state budget woes, courts all across the country are cutting back on personnel and the number of hours or even days that they're open. That's causing long delays, especially when it comes to civil litigation.

"There's no question that there's been a pretty devastating impact in lots of states in how we deliver services," says Kevin Burke, president of the American Judges Association.

Courts in Kansas will be closed this Friday — the first of five Fridays the courts will shut down over the next two months, the result of furloughs for 1,500 state employees.

Kansas is only the latest state to reduce access to its court system due to budget cuts of up to 30 percent.

Courts in Oregon will be closed for even more Fridays this year. One circuit in Georgia stopped hearing civil cases altogether to devote its remaining time and attention to criminal cases. Cases in some parts of North Carolina and Ohio ground to a halt completely because the courts couldn't afford to buy paper.

Such delays are not just creating inconvenience for people trying to claim money from landlords (or tenants) or fight traffic tickets. Court cuts are hitting people where they live.

A simple divorce that might have taken six months now can easily linger on for a full year. Arguably even more disruptive are the longer waits to resolve custody disputes.

"The impact on people in great distress, such as abused women seeking temporary restraining orders, is beyond measure in money," says Jon Streeter, president of the State Bar of California.

Nearly Universal Cuts

Courts are a basic function of government, and the judiciary is meant to be a separate and co-equal branch of government. Yet court systems rely on the political branches to provide them with funding.

For all the attention paid to the U.S. Supreme Court and the rest of the federal judiciary, the reality is that more than 95 percent of the nation's legal caseload is handled by state, county and municipal courts. Still, courts typically make up less than 1 percent of most state budgets.

With states facing severe shortfalls in recent years, nearly all of them have cut judicial funding. Courts might not cost states much, compared with education and health care, but they tend not to have the same sort of active political constituencies lobbying on their behalf, either.

According to a survey by the National Center for State Courts, 42 states cut court funding last year, meaning most courts have shrunk their staff, while about half have reduced hours.

"It can take up to a year from the time you first get a [traffic] ticket until you get a trial date," says Ann Donlan, communications director for San Francisco Superior Court.

'The Bleeding Has Stopped'

Judges in most states sense that legislators have grown more aware of the challenges raised by funding cuts and aren't likely to cut much further. "It appears that the bleeding has stopped," Streeter says.

But California and other states may still cut more, depending on their overall fiscal health. And courts are still adjusting to reductions that have already been made.

In Iowa, for instance, the judicial branch now has fewer employees than it did 24 years ago. Over the same period, the number of case filings in the state has increased by 54 percent.

That's led to long lines and lots of delays for simple matters such as retrieving documents as well as resolving more complex cases such as housing foreclosures, which have grown immensely as a share of court dockets in recent years.

Criminal Delays

And all of that has to take a back seat to crime. With fewer workers and some courtrooms shut down entirely, courts are devoting a greater share of their resources to criminal cases, because of the constitutional guarantee of a speedy trial.

"It's definitely true that criminal cases take precedence over civil cases," says Burke, who is a judge in Minneapolis.

Of course, speed is relative, and even criminal cases are dragging on longer these days. In part, that's because budgets for public defenders' offices are being cut just as much. Florida, for instance, is losing about a third of its legal aid attorneys.

Trials that take an extra year or so to resolve not only add to expense, but heighten uncertainty as well. "In the criminal context, people move and the type of persons who are witnesses tend to be more transient," says Gregory Hurley, an analyst with the National Center for State Courts.

No Money To Experiment

Financial constraints on criminal courts could lead, ultimately, to higher costs for states in the form of more incarceration. Many states have launched initiatives over the past few years to combat recidivism and keep repeat offenders from returning to jail.

Budget cuts have left less money for specialized courts that handle matters such as drugs and mental health issues, however. That leads to overscheduled judges being more likely to hand out prison sentences, argue some criminal defense attorneys.

But it's the civil backlogs that are gaining the most attention. The American Bar Association has set up a task force to address underfunding of the courts that is headed by two of the nation's most prominent attorneys, David Boies and Theodore Olson — the legal combatants in Bush v. Gore who have more recently teamed up to promote same-sex marriage rights.

Other Strange Bedfellows

You'd expect trial lawyers to be up in arms about courts cutting back. How can plaintiffs ever hope to achieve a settlement if the people they're suing know they won't see a courtroom for years to come?

The court funding situation has become so acute, however, that trial lawyers are finding rare common cause with chambers of commerce and other business groups who recognize that courts are key to enforcing contracts.

"When states financially starve their judiciaries, they inadvertently create environments toxic to economic growth,"

Lisa A. Rickard and Bill Robinson III, respectively the presidents of the U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform and the American Bar Association, wrote in a joint opinion piece published in USA Today.
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Study: Alabama lawyers earned less in 2010
by Antrenise Cole, Birmingham Business Journal
April 5, 2012

The Alabama State Bar’s recently released study revealed economic trends for law practices in the state following the recession.

The study, which was conducted August to November 2010, looks at lawyer income, lawyer employment, practice setting, legal staffing, billing methods, hours and rates, use of fee agreements, collections, overhead and expenses and retirement plans and activities.

Certain questions were asked only of private practice attorneys, retired attorneys and unemployed attorneys participating in the survey. Of the 2,000 state bar members randomly selected to participate in the online survey, 427 completed it.

The largest single group of respondents (22.8 percent) indicated they earned less than $25,000 before taxes in 2009, perhaps a reflection of the financial difficulties lawyers experienced following the economic downturn, the survey said.

The next largest group (21 percent) stated that they made between $50,001 and $75,000. This was the median salary range for all respondents.

Twenty-eight percent of respondents reported income of more than $100,000 per year. That figure was down from a high of 40 percent reported in the state bar’s previous survey in 1998.
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Students hone judicial knowledge
By Alvin Benn, Montgomery Advertiser
April 11, 2012

“No Justice, No Peace,” has become a popular protest phrase in recent years when one group or another has a bone to pick, often with America’s judiciary.

Something perhaps more important also might be worthy of a placard as in: “No Courts, No Justice, No Freedom.”

That’s the theme for Law Day 2012, and the Alabama State Bar once again deserves credit for sponsoring an event to draw attention to various aspects of a judicial system quite unlike any other in the world.

The idea is to get students to better understand and, perhaps, appreciate what Alabama’s court system means to them.

Invitations went out to thousands of students by way of their teachers and advisers, hoping they could convince them to submit essays and posters touching on the “No Courts, No Justice, No Freedom” issue.

Sadly, only 433 essays and posters were studied by the judges. As pathetic as that total was, it about doubled last year’s total. Two years ago only 170 students responded.

“We do our best to convince the teachers to try and get their students more involved,” said Marcia Daniel, who supervises the project. “We can only hope that it will happen eventually.”

U.S. Savings Bonds will be awarded for winners in each of the categories while their teachers will receive donations for their school’s general fund.

Some of the winning entries were exceptional, showing research skills that might reflect an interest in the law and possible careers.

Other entries were, to put it kindly, apparently lacking in originality and reflecting more copying skills than burning any midnight oil on the project.

But, the fact that they did take the time to spend part of their day working on the essays and posters is commendable. They should receive a gold star on their report card — if they do such things these days.

As one of the judges, I looked for a basic understanding of the law by students in grades 7-9. It was apparent that several did their homework. Not all agreed with the way the system works today, but most submitted essays that should have made their teachers happy.

Take, for instance, Brady Unzicker of S. Gerard School in Phenix City, who took top honors by focusing on two of America’s most historic Supreme Court decisions — Plessy V. Ferguson in 1896 and Brown V. Board of Education in 1954.

In 1896, the nation’s highest court held that separation of the races in public schools was constitutionally correct as long as racially separate facilities were “equal.”

That opinion was a disgrace. All the justices had to do was venture out into Alabama’s Black Belt or Mississippi’s Delta Region to see the horrible disparities.

Then, in 1954, the Supreme Court took off the blinders of their predecessors and overruled them in a long overdue opinion.

“This case has truly changed the face of America,” said Brady, an eighth-grader whose teacher is Kim Jones. “It shows that without the courts, there would have never been any justice resulting in freedoms for African-Americans.”

Hayden Desmond of Hilltop Montessori School in Birmingham, whose teacher is Sherry Cook, took second place by praising the Founding Fathers “who knew that if there were no courts, no one would have any rights and we would live in a barbaric society which would just be survival of the fittest.”

Not all the students agreed with the way the court system is run today, and one sent in an assessment that showed she wasn’t afraid to express her opinion.

Her name is Starlaina Graham of Central Freshman Academy in Phenix City, who took third place with questions about whether judges are truly unbiased.

Who is to say, she wondered, whether those in charge of a trial will “determine guilt or innocence based on appearance, gender or even race.

“That’s the first reason why court systems are unfair,” said Starlaina, whose teacher is Barbara Romey. “The sooner the court system structure is changed the better off we will be.”

It’s just for that reason, Daniel indicated, that a better understanding of the court system is so important or “we would have neither justice nor freedom.”

Winners of the contest will be honored at the Heflin-Torbert Judicial Building on May 1, which is Law Day. The event starts at 9:15 a.m., and the public is invited.

The following are winners in the contest:

Posters: Grades K-3: Sasha Foreman, Lily Geisen and Simms Berdy, all of Birmingham.

Posters: Grades 4-6: Nicholas Fitzgerald, Simon Jeon and Madison Foshee, all of Montgomery.

Essays: Grades 7-9: Brady Unzicker, Phenix City; Hayden Desmond, Birmingham; and Starlaina Graham of Phenix City.

Essays: Grades 10-12: Read Mills, Hoover; Dannielle Thompson, Montgomery; and Jarmine Bolden, Hoover.

Twitter: Paul Waldrop, Nick Jackson and Mary Jenkins, all of Phenix City.

Facebook: Ashley Biggs, Monica Sarbabia and Alwaleed Alzahrani, all of Montgomery.
- - -

Cumberland School of Law celebrates 50 years at Samford University
By Eric Velasco, The Birmingham News
April 08, 2012

HOMEWOOD, Alabama -- Cumberland School of Law this week will mark the 50th anniversary of an audacious move by Birmingham lawyer Arthur Weeks to broker the first-ever purchase of a U.S. law school and bring Cumberland to the campus of what is now Samford University.

Weeks, former dean of the Lebanon, Tenn., school, convinced officials of what was then Howard College to buy the fading law school for $125,000 and move it to the Birmingham area.

The first classes on the Howard campus met in September 1961. Starting with the 1962 graduation, some 8,600 students have earned degrees there.

"Arthur Weeks saved this law school by moving it here, and he saved it a couple of times once it was here," said John Carroll, Cumberland's dean since 2001 and a 1974 graduate. "He is the real hero of this place."

Cumberland's influence is deeply felt in Birmingham and beyond. One of three law schools in Jefferson County, Cumberland is the only accredited school here. Its graduates have become leaders in the law, government and the community -- and not just in Alabama.

"Its impact goes all over the country," Carroll said.

Cumberland's heritage will be celebrated Friday and Saturday with a reunion weekend that includes a student moot court competition, meetings with faculty and leaders and a history lesson about a law school that refused to die.

Founded in 1847, Cumberland is the nation's 14th oldest active law school.
The Tennessee campus produced two U.S. Supreme Court justices, a Nobel Prize-winning U.S. Secretary of State and scores of U.S. congressmen and governors.

But the school began to lag in academic stature during the early 20th century.

As dean in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Weeks helped Cumberland gain American Bar Association accreditation before he returned to Birmingham.

Later, when the cash-strapped school faced losing its accreditation in 1960, the Howard graduate engineered its relocation. Weeks again became Cumberland's dean and convinced the ABA to delay its accreditation decision to give Howard College time to build adequate facilities.

Cumberland never lost its accreditation and now has a reputation as one of the top schools for producing courtroom-ready lawyers. U.S. News and World Report ranked Cumberland's trial advocacy program fourth nationally in 2012, up from fifth in 2011.

TOP GUNS
Top law school trial advocacy programs nationally (and number of students).
1. Stetson University (855)
2. Temple University (722)
3. Illinois Institute of Technology (755)
4. Cumberland School of Law (489)
T5. Baylor University (435)
T5. South Texas College of Law (996)
Source: U.S. News and World Report, 2012 rankings.

Last month, a Cumberland team won the American Association for Justice Student Trial Advocacy Competition, the fifth such title since 1984. Cumberland teams also have won the nation's top mock trial competition, the Tournament of Champions, and the MSU National Trial Advocacy Competition during the current academic year.

"This school's heritage has been practical training," said Carroll, a former civil rights lawyer and U.S. Magistrate Judge. "Now we're back with a vengeance."

The Birmingham campus has produced its own luminaries, including former Florida governor Charlie Crist. Three of the nine current Alabama Supreme Court justices, including the chief justice, graduated from Cumberland at Samford. So did three of the five current judges on the Alabama Court of Civil Appeals, including the presiding judge, and one of the five judges on the state Court of Criminal Appeals.

Add to the roster federal judges, members of Congress, legislators from several states, the chief administrative law judge in North Carolina; and three of the last four presidents of the Alabama State Bar.

Cumberland arrived in Birmingham with only 35 students, a few faculty members, 24,000 books from the old law library, the alumni list, class composites and a portrait of its most famous graduate, Cordell Hull.

Another 28 first-year students joined in. Classes initially were held in a room with cinder-block walls lit by bare bulbs. The first building dedicated to the law school, Memory Leake Robinson Hall, opened in 1964.

Cumberland now has 489 students and 48 professors. Opened in 1996, Cumberland's Lucille Stewart Beeson Law Library has 200,000 volumes on its shelves and another 96,000 on microfiche. The school endowment is $18 million.

"This school was transferred here with virtually nothing," said Brad Bishop, a Municipal Court judge and Cumberland professor since 1971. "To build what is here now in 50 years is just amazing."

Proud heritage

Founded by Abraham Caruthers, Cumberland's beginnings in a small town outside Nashville also were modest. A dozen men first met Oct. 1, 1847, in a law office, said Howard Walthall, a Cumberland professor since 1975.

One of those students was Nathan Green Jr., who after graduating returned to the school and taught there for 63 years, including service as the school's chancellor, until his death in 1919.

[Click here to hear the story of the 'perfect law professor's death.]

The school grew quickly. It was the largest law school in the nation in 1858, with 188 students versus Harvard's 146.

CUMBERLAND IMPACT
Here is a partial list of graduates from Cumberland School of Law at Samford University now in key positions:
11th U.S. Court of Appeals judge
• Joel Dubina (chief)
U.S. District Court Judges, Northern District Alabama
• Sharon Blackburn (chief)
• Karon Bowdre
U.S. District Court Judge, Southern District of Florida
• James Cohn
U.S. Bankruptcy Court judges
• James J. Robinson
• Benjamin Cohen
U.S. Magistrate judges
• Paul Greene (chief)
• John Ott
Alabama Supreme Court justices
• Charles Malone (chief)
• Greg Shaw
• Mike Bolin
Alabama Court of Civil Appeals judges
• William C. Thompson (presiding)
• Terri Willingham Thomas
• Craig Pittman
Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals judge
• J. Michael Joiner
Chief administrative law judge, North Carolina
• Julian Mann III
Alabama State Bar president
• Jim Pratt (2011-2012)
• Phil McCallum (president-elect)
Birmingham Bar president
• Joseph Fawal
U.S. House of Representatives
• Robert Aderholt (Ala.)
• Martha Roby (Ala.)
• Dennis Ross (Fla.)
Alabama Senate
• Roger Bedford
• George "Marc" Keahey
• Cam Ward
Alabama House of Representatives
• Gregory K. Burdine
• Joe Hubbard
Source: Cumberland Alumni Relations Office.

The school buildings were burned during the Civil War, but classes resumed in 1865. Cumberland moved into newly built Caruthers Hall in 1878.

Once on the cutting edge of legal education, the school fell out of the mainstream by the early 1900s, Walthall said. It offered a one-year curriculum, later with an optional second year; the American Bar Association was pushing accreditation standards that included three-year law schools.

"Cumberland thought it was doing fine," said Walthall, who co-authored a book about the school's history. "They thought it was an efficient way to educate students, especially during the Depression in the 1930s. When the paradigm shifted, it was difficult to catch up."

In the 1920s and 1930s, Cumberland produced two lawyers who each went on to become governor in Florida. But the graduate from that period best remembered today was a dog named Rascal.

[Click here to hear the tale of Rascal, the law school dog.]

Rascal regularly attended classes starting in 1933, and was awarded an honorary degree in "canine jurisprudence," Walthall said. Rascal was buried on the Tennessee campus after he died in 1940 and his remains were moved to Birmingham with the law school. Each spring, Walthall leads a parade of students and their dogs in memory of Rascal.

Fading glory

In 1945, Cordell Hull, an 1891 Cumberland grad and the nation's longest-serving U.S. Secretary of State, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in establishing the United Nations.

But his alma mater then was a shadow of the institution that graduated him.

Cumberland did not gain accreditation until 1949, 26 years after the ABA started the approval process. A mere 12 years later, Cumberland was in debt and facing loss of its accreditation.

"It very nearly died in 1961," Walthall said.

After the move to Birmingham, the relationship between the law school and Baptist-affiliated college sometimes was rocky.

Part of it was the new breed of student Cumberland attracted, Carroll said.

"The law school brought to campus people the university had never seen before," he said. "Our student population was older, from a geographically wider area and with a different political persuasion. People like me."

Carroll arrived on a motorcycle in 1971, a Vietnam vet in his late 20s who had grown up in Washington and had graduated from Boston's Tufts University.

For years, Cumberland students were rankled by the university's mandatory requirement to attend chapel sessions. In 1974, the law students and university worked out an alternative -- the Cordell Hull Speakers Forum. It has attracted nationally known figures including consumer advocate and later presidential candidate Ralph Nader, then-U.S. Sen. and current Vice President Joe Biden and Morris Dees, founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

"For years thereafter, the university and the law school still struggled with their relationship, but that was a step in the right direction," Carroll said. "These two entities with nothing in common have come together and grown together."

Andrew Westmoreland, Samford's president since 2006, said he heard the old stories when he arrived.

"But it seemed to me that those times were long past," he said. "The Samford folks understand the value of the law school and the Cumberland people believe this Samford connection is pretty good for them."

Small, selective

Today's Cumberland is small by design, accepting roughly 150 first-year students out of 1,400 applicants last year, Carroll said.

Its specialization in trial advocacy also helps the school be selective, he said. Cumberland has focused on building a faculty with both scholarly credentials and hands-on experience, Carroll said.

"That means students will have a teacher, but also a mentor," he said. "Students consistently say one of Cumberland's greatest strengths is the relationship with the faculty."

Julian Mann, the North Carolina chief administrative law judge and Cumberland's national alumni president, said professors always were accessible and often formed enduring relationships with students.

Mann, who graduated in 1974, recalled asking Bishop for a letter of recommendation when he was a candidate for his current job. "What impressed me was he remembered me, 15 years later," he said. "The faculty/student relationship only has improved since."

Westmoreland and Mann said Carroll also has played a key role in Cumberland's renewed success by galvanizing the alumni, recruiting top faculty and reinvigorating the school's mission.

"John Carroll is an intellectual and a competitor," Mann said. "He wants the school to be recognized as the best. He knows what it takes to finish in first place."

Carroll said Cumberland now is charting new courses to better prepare students for the evolving practice of law. Continued success requires innovation, he said.

[Click here to hear Carroll speak of Cumberland's future.]

"I'm proud to be a Cumberland grad and see how far it has come," Carroll said. "I don't know if, in 1962, people thought it would work out. But it has."
- - -

Alabama a top stop for justices
By JAY REEVES, Associated Press
April 5, 2012

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. (AP) — The University of Alabama isn't an Ivy League law school like Yale or Harvard, yet few colleges are better at luring U.S. Supreme Court justices as speakers: Every current justice has either addressed 'Bama students or agreed to speak in coming years.

Documents obtained by The Associated Press through an open records request and interviews show what it takes to attract justices so far outside the confines of the Northeast.

Southern hospitality is part of it, along with payments meant as a show of gratitude and personal pleas from other judges, friends and the occasional U.S. senator. And there are added attractions that an Ivy League school may have a hard time matching, like spare ribs slathered with barbecue sauce, Crimson Tide football games and, in one case, a copy of "To Kill a Mockingbird" autographed by author Harper Lee.

Alabama's law school — which generally is ranked among the nation's best — has become a Deep South outpost for justices since the late 1990s, when U.S. District Judge W. Harold Albritton of Montgomery began pursuing justices to speak at his alma mater in a lecture series funded by his family.

The Albritton Lecture Series has featured 11 different speeches by 10 justices since Justice Anthony Kennedy first ate ribs at the famed Dreamland Bar-B-Que in 1996, and the chief justices of Australia, Canada and Israel also have spoken.

Besides the seven current court justices who have appeared, Albritton said Associate Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor have agreed to speak to students in coming years.

"It's just a matter of scheduling the time," Albritton said during an interview in his office in Montgomery.

The dean of Alabama's law school, Kenneth Randall, said the justices' talks are a favorite among students.

"Nothing excites the students more than the presence of a justice on the nation's highest court being at the school," he said.

To be sure, justices visit Harvard University more often than Alabama. A spokeswoman for the Harvard law school, Sarah Marston, said a justice presides over the school's moot court finals each year, and justices have made at least one speech at the school for each of the past six or seven years. That includes Kagan and Justice Stephen Breyer, both former members of the Harvard law faculty.

Yet court officials say justices receive hundreds of speaking invitations each year, and Alabama gets its judge far more often than not.

Records obtained by the AP from the university and an interview with Albritton show the years of cajoling it sometimes takes to bring a justice to Alabama, whose most notable law graduates include the late Justice Hugo L. Black and four-term Gov. George C. Wallace.

The Albritton Fund, administered by the law school, pays the justices' expenses and offers payments known as honoraria for the visit. Documents show Justice Antonin Scalia got a $4,500 check after appearing in 2009, and Thomas received $5,000 the same year. In 2005, for another appearance, the fund donated $2,000 to a New York convent in Thomas' name.

Former Justice Sandra Day O'Connor declined any payment, while the university donated $4,500 to four music and theater groups supported by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg after a speech in 2004. The fund donated $2,000 to then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist's church in McLean, Va., after he spoke in 2003.

In Albritton's view, money isn't the key to appealing to the justices. Rather, he said, it's the mix of Southern hospitality, a small-town pace and traits that make Tuscaloosa unique — like college football games in a 101,000-seat stadium and famous barbecue.

"It's not big-time wining and dining, it's just being pleasant to people," said Albritton, who is semi-retired but previously served as chief judge in Alabama's middle district — a position that allowed him to meet several justices at conferences.

Justices are bombarded with speaking invitations, so Albritton tries to identify people who can help plead his case for an appearance. Those include Alabama alumni who are law clerks, former Supreme Court clerks who taught at the school, mutual friends and fellow judges.

Kennedy, the first justice to speak at Alabama in 1996 and now a potential swing vote as the court considers the constitutionality of the Obama administration's health care law, is a sports fan who had heard about Dreamland's famous ribs while watching college football games, Albritton said.

"He said, 'What would really add to the attraction for me to come is if you could tell me we'd go get ribs at Dreamland,'" Albritton recalled. "I told him, 'You can count on that.'"
Kennedy's official schedule, released through the records request, shows he ate at the dark, smoky restaurant during his visit in September 1996.

Justice Clarence Thomas, a huge sports fan who enjoys traveling in a recreational vehicle, attended an Alabama football game during one of two visits, Albritton said. After visiting an RV lot full of tailgaters, the justice walked to the stadium, chatting with a crimson-clad Alabama fan most of the way about NASCAR and the late Dale Earnhardt.

Records show Ginsburg, a fan of the arts, received the autographed copy of "To Kill a Mockingbird" during her visit.

The justice's speeches almost always get media coverage, and Chief Justice John Roberts sparked a news flurry during his talk in 2010 when, referring to President Barack Obama's state of the union address, he said the presidential appearances had degenerated into a "political pep rally." But records show the speech may not have ever happened without the intervention of U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., a member of the Judiciary Committee that approved Roberts' nomination in 2005.

Albritton said he saw Sessions at a grocery store in Montgomery one night and asked him to prod the chief justice. Sessions agreed, and Roberts later wrote back to Sessions, saying: "I am already badly overcommitted for 2010, and am trying very hard to cut back on outside commitments. Nevertheless, given your longstanding support of the Judiciary — not to mention the consideration and courtesy that you have shown me personally — I find that I cannot decline."

Albritton said it's all about working connections, and that can include justices encouraging each other to make the trip south.

The conservative Thomas and former Justice David H. Souter are close friends despite being ideological opposites, Albritton said, and Thomas tried to talk Souter into speaking in Tuscaloosa. Even Thomas couldn't close that deal, he said.

"The only one I wasn't able to get is Souter, and he just doesn't do these things," Albritton said.
- - -

County to serve as pilot program for Veterans Court
By Nicole Loggins, Shelby County Reporter
April 6, 2012

COLUMBIANA — Circuit Judge Bill Bostick recently announced that Shelby County has been selected by Alabama Chief Justice Chuck Malone to serve as a pilot county for the establishment of a Veterans Court.

Bostick will preside over the court, which will provide judicial supervision for military veterans facing criminal charges, with assistance from the Veterans Administration.

Bostick said many veterans coming back, particularly from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, have been filtering into the criminal justice system.

“Our goal is to ensure that veterans involved with the criminal justice system have access to the services and treatment they are eligible for by virtue of the service they rendered,” Bostick said. “We hope to build upon the success of our existing Drug Court and Mental Health Court, which have a proven track record of significantly reducing recidivism among participants.”

Bostick plans to mirror the Veterans Court after the existing Drug and Mental Health Courts.

“Drug court is self-sustaining. The people that got arrested are the ones to pay for their own drug screens, as it should be,” he said.

Bostick said he does not plan to ask for money from the county and logistics for the program have not yet been finalized.

Shelby County Probate Judge Jim Fuhrmeister, who presides over the county’s mental health court, said he anticipates a significant overlap between Mental Health Court and Veterans Court.

“Studies show that major depression and substance abuse have increased among veterans deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan,” Fuhrmeister said.

Bostick, a former prosecutor with the county district attorney’s office, has assembled a diverse team with military experience to attend a national training seminar on Veterans Courts in New York at the end of April.

Bostick said repeat offenders end up costing the county more money in the long run.

“The second time a person commits a criminal offense it costs more money for everybody,” Bostick said. “They’re less likely to make bond the second time, so our county jail will house them pre-trial. The trial will take longer to get to because the punishment is going to be higher. It’s a vicious cycle, so I like what you can do with a court like this.”
- - -

Legislature enacts new discipline system for judges – TN Court of the Judiciary abolished, new board created
By Tom Humphrey, Knoxville.com
Tuesday, April 10, 2012

NASHVILLE — After years of sometimes heated argument, the House sent to the governor Monday night compromise legislation that puts into place a new system for disciplining judges for misdeeds on the bench.

Final approval came on an 88-5 House vote without any debate. The Senate had approved SB2671 unanimously earlier.

Though the votes came with virtually no discussion, the debate over the past three years has included repeated charges that the present Court of the Judiciary ignored judicial misdeeds and operated in unwarranted secrecy. Former Knox County Criminal Court Judge Richard Baumgartner was offered by critics of the current system as a prime example of its shortcomings.

The bill abolishes the Court of the Judiciary, which was composed of judges and lawyers appointed by the state Supreme Court and the Tennessee Bar Association. In its place, the legislation creates a new 16-member Board of Judicial Conduct, 10 of them judges and six nonjudges. Of the nonjudges, three will be lawyers and three will be "lay persons."

The 10 judges will be appointed by judicial organizations rather than by the Supreme Court and the bar association. The six nonjudges will be appointed by the governor and the speakers of the House and Senate, each having two appointees.

"This will not be judges picking judges to judge judges," said Sen. Mike Faulk, R-Church Hill, who sponsored the bill in the Senate.

Faulk hailed the measure as a "quantum leap forward" in the policing of judicial misconduct, in transparency of the process and in "making sure citizens have a fair hearing" when they believe a judge has acted improperly.

It is a compromise between more drastic overhaul proposed by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Mae Beavers, who had proposed having all appointees overseeing judges named by legislators and requiring more of the process to be open to the public. The Supreme Court had adamantly opposed Beavers' legislation, but while it was pending put in place new and more stringent rules against judicial misconduct.

The new Board of Judicial Conduct has a different system for investigating complaints against judges with non-lawyers involved. Also, it prohibits any lawyer who has ever practiced before the judge targeted by a complaint from being involved in the investigation.

It further requires the Board of Judicial Conduct to file regular reports with the Legislature on the number and disposition of complaints. That will include disclosure of the names of judges who receive multiple "private reprimands," delivered now in secret to judges deemed to have made mistakes that should not be disclosed to the public.

The Court of the Judiciary did not publicly act against Baumgartner until suspending him as a judge after his conviction for misconduct, though there have been reports that complaints were filed against him.

Beavers charged that the Court of the Judiciary ignored too many complaints and was too lenient toward judges. According to its own statistics, the Court of the Judiciary handled 703 complaints from July of 2009 until June 20, 2011, and only 25 of those resulted in sanctions against a judge. Seven of those were "private reprimands," nine were public reprimands, eight were "deferred discipline agreements" amounting to probation and only one was a suspension.

Under the old system, most complaints were dismissed by the court's disciplinary counsel appointed by the judges on the Court of the Judiciary. The new system will have a three-member panel investigating each complaint and its action will be reviewed by a six-member panel.

The bill calls for the Board of Judicial Conduct to "sunset," or cease to exist in 2014. Beavers and others said that will give legislators a chance to review how well the new system works and, if necessary, further changes can be made then.
- - -

Rash judges bring disorder to court
By Bill Rankin, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
April 7, 2012

CLEVELAND — Lynn Akeley-Alderman barely had enough time to use her new “chief judge” letterhead before she followed her predecessor by stepping down from the bench in disgrace.

Akeley-Alderman resigned March 30, shortly before the state’s judicial watchdog agency was about to file ethics charges against her. Among the expected complaints was that she met privately with another judge to speak up on behalf of a methamphetamine trafficker who had a case pending before the other judge.

Just 29 days earlier, then-Chief Judge David Barrett retired abruptly after he made national news for pulling out a handgun in his courtroom. He had pretended to offer his pistol to an uncooperative witness, saying if she wanted to kill her lawyer she could use his gun. Barrett was making a rhetorical point, but his method prompted an investigation by the Judicial Qualifications Commission.

You might think the exits, less than a month apart, of Barrett and Akeley-Alderman from the same judicial circuit would be unusual. They’re not.

In a span of just one week in April 2010, the Griffin Judicial Circuit, which includes Fayette County, lost two of its four judges to scandals, including one in which the chief judge was caught having sex with a public defender who had cases before him.

In just four months’ time in 2010, both of the Mountain Judicial Circuit’s judges left the bench in disgrace, including one after he was accused of going to Las Vegas with a woman whose divorce he’d signed.

Georgia has 49 judicial circuits and each has its own chief Superior Court judge. Since the beginning of 2010, six chief judges have stepped down while under investigation for ethical lapses. A seventh was reprimanded for a drunken-driving charge.

“Some people who should not be judges get in judicial office and think they can do anything,” said Stephen Bright, senior counsel for the Southern Center for Human Rights and a Yale Law School professor. “This does not say anything good about these judges or the process that put them on the bench.”

On the other hand, he said, “It does indicate that the Judicial Qualifications Commission continues to do an outstanding job protecting Georgia from unethical, dishonest judges.”

The state needs a less-political, merit-based selection process of judges to ensure that more people appointed to the bench have the integrity and ethical standards to sit as a judge, Bright said.

In Georgia, a lawyer can become a Superior Court judge by defeating an incumbent in an election, winning an election for an open seat or being appointed by the governor when a vacancy becomes available. Georgia’s governor picks the members of the panel that screens candidates for judicial vacancies and sends him a short list of recommendations.

Although other states do not give the governor such control over the selection process, there have been no legislative proposals in recent years to change the way Georgia goes about appointing judges.

Atlanta lawyer Kenneth Shigley, president of the State Bar of Georgia, acknowledged that the steady stream of judges leaving the state’s bench doesn’t look good.

“All people are fallible, but we want judges to be a little less so.” Still, Shigley added, “the overwhelming majority of our judges are incredibly conscientious, true to their calling and doing just fine.”

Shigley suggested that Georgia could get a better pool of candidates for judgeships if there wasn’t such a big gap between the compensation enjoyed by lawyers in private practice and the salaries given state judges.

“It’s tough for lawyers in their prime to make the sacrifice for themselves and their families,” he said.

A Superior Court judge in Georgia makes a $120,252 annual salary, and some counties supplement their pay. In the five-county metro area, supplements range from $37,000 per judge in Clayton to $58,711 in Cobb, according to the Administrative Office of the Courts.

Shigley said it would be too simplistic to suggest a direct correlation between lagging salaries and the unfortunate incidents of judicial misconduct. “There is also the possible factor of rising standards of conduct and a more active [Judicial Qualifications Commission] dealing with issues that would have been ignored or addressed privately in the past,” he said.

There is no question the Judicial Qualifications Commission, an independent state panel comprised of judges, lawyers and lay people, has been more aggressive in investigating judicial misconduct. A number of high-profile investigations pursued in recent years has also sparked a steady increase of complaints, from 337 in 2008 to 517 last year, Jeff Davis, the agency’s director, said. He predicted the commission will receive more than 700 complaints this year.

“The public is more empowered to complain when they see judges are held accountable for misconduct,” Davis said. “People realize that not only is there a place to file a complaint, but that we will take their complaints seriously.”

This past session, the Legislature boosted the commission’s budget by $100,000 to $512,000. To handle the increased case load, the commission will soon hire a new staff attorney to help with investigations.

The recent resignations of Barrett and Akeley-Alderman from the Enotah Judical Circuit left Murphy Miller as the last full-time judge on the bench - and the circuit’s third chief judge in only 30 days.

“It’s been stressful and real unfortunate,” said Miller, the son of former Gov. Zell Miller and a former public defender for the circuit. “But we’re managing to keep the doors of our courthouses open. I won’t say it’s been seamless, but we’re managing just fine.”

In January, Miller took up the task of starting up the circuit’s first mental health court. This month, he had to take over Barrett’s job as drug court judge, in addition to assuming the circuit’s administrative duties.

The Enotah circuit is split by the Blue Ridge Mountains, with Lumpkin and White counties on the southern side and Towns and Union counties on the other side of the mountain range. Having only one full-time judge presents logistical challenges for lawyers who may need to get an emergency motion, such as a temporary protective order, signed.

“If we need a judge to sign a bond order or an order for a psychiatric evaluation or if you are trying to arrange a time for a guilty plea, sometimes we don’t know where to go,” said Charles Brown, the circuit’s public defender. “We just want it to stabilize. We just want quality judges and fair hearings and hope the governor will make good appointments.”

The governor’s Judicial Nominating Commission is seeking nominees for the two Enotah vacancies by Friday and expects start interviews in May. That means to two vacancies should be filled by late spring.

Steve Ferrell, the court’s administrator, said one benefit of having a judicial circuit located in the heart of the Georgia mountains is that it’s not that difficult to get senior judges to agree to come to the area to fill in for a while. At least three - Fred Bishop, John Girardeau and Robert Mallis - are expected to help out, and Hugh Stone, who retired as the circuit’s chief judge in 2006, is already taking cases.

“I know we’ve taken a bite with the negative publicity,” Ferrell said. “But with our good reservoir of senior judges to tap into and with judge Miller’s determination to keep everything moving forward, we’re going to make it.”

Lawrence Sorgen, a Hiawassee lawyer with a general practice in the circuit, said the abrupt vacancies create uncertainty for both lawyers and their clients.

“It’s a real concern,” Sorgen said. “We don’t like losing judges, especially in this manner.”
---

Harper Lee’s Sister, Alice, Is 100, Still Practices Law, and Remembers Everything
By Mary McDonagh Murphy, The Daily Beast
Apr 1, 2012

Centenarian Alice Lee is the oldest lawyer still practicing in Alabama. Featured in a documentary about her sister that aired on PBS, she talked to The Daily Beast about everything from Truman Capote to what it takes to fall asleep at night.

On a warm day last September, in a concrete bank building not far from the center of Monroeville, Ala., a party was held in the conference room at the law offices of Barnett, Bugg, Lee & Carter. Thirty people had been invited. Pink punch in punch glasses and coffee cups lined one of the conference tables, platters of food, another. And seated at a table in the corner was the reason for the celebration: the firm's senior partner, the oldest practicing attorney in the state, Alice Finch Lee, was turning 100. Guests included a judge, the head of the Monroeville Chamber of Commerce, and Harry Rankins, who mows her lawn. They lined up to write in a guest book and pay their respects. Miss Alice, as she is known, has a sister 15 years her junior. Nelle Harper Lee is a novelist and known outside the family as Harper Lee.

I was among the guests at Miss Alice’s party having completed the documentary Hey, Boo: Harper Lee and 'To Kill a Mockingbird.’ Harper Lee famously stopped granting interviews in 1964. But her older sister agreed, after some persuasion, to talk with me. She said that Nelle Harper “grew up quite the little tomboy” and later became a novelist who “did not think that a writer needed to be recognized in person and it bothered her when she became too familiar.”

Harper Lee dedicated her first and only novel to her older sister and her father, “in consideration of Love & Affection.” Not a recluse but not much for public appearances, she did not attend Miss Alice’s office party. There would be a family-only gathering two days later at the golf club.

Miss Alice is a tiny bird of a woman, with straight white hair that stops just above her jaw line, parted on the side and held back with a bobby pin. Her face is a thin oval with a pointy nose. She has smiling blue eyes behind square gray glasses and a ladylike grin that punctuates most of her encounters. She wore a salmon pink blazer with black piping on the collar, a matching skirt, hemmed below the knee, and pair of white Reebok sneakers. She is adorable, like a living Roz Chast cartoon character.

Miss Alice’s hearing is all but gone these days and so the guests, one by one, sidled in close to say happy birthday, hug, kiss, or clutch her hand. A yellow legal pad was on hand. Some wrote notes, watched while she read them and looked into her eyes. “We love you,” ”You are a great example,” “Are you tired?” “Do you need to use the restroom?” the pad said.

“When I was little, I was a great paper-doll cutter-outer,” Miss Alice remembered not too long ago. “We would make whole paper-doll houses and paper-doll families. Children did not have many store-bought toys then. They made their own recreations, and it was not difficult to do.”

She grew up a few doors away on South Alabama Avenue. The Lee family house has been gone for decades, replaced by Mel’s Dairy Dream, a take-out shack, but Miss Alice’s 72-year-old nephew, Hank Conner, can recall every inch of it. Mr. Conner took time away from the festivities to walk its footprint. He remembered the chinaberry tree and treehouse in the backyard, the wall he sat on while waiting for his granddaddy, Amasa Coleman Lee, the original Lee in Miss Alice’s law firm, to come home from work. He also remembered the Victrola in the living room and his other aunt, Nelle Harper, playing the original cast album from Annie Get Your Gun.

Conner pointed to the empty lot next door where another novelist, Truman Capote, the inspiration for Dill Harris in To Kill a Mockingbird, spent much of his childhood playing with his tomboy friend, Nelle. The only remnants of that era are the stone wall that once divided the two houses, an empty goldfish pond, and Capote’s aunt’s camellia bushes.

Later on, Conner recalled, manuscripts arrived at the house, addressed to Miss Alice. They were from New York, where her younger sister was living, writing by night and working by day as an airline ticket reservationist for British Overseas Airline Corporation (BOAC). “Alice is a very good editor and a very good copy editor,” he said.

When I interviewed her, Miss Alice was 98. Because she is deaf, on-camera questioning presented challenges. She needed to be able to see my lips up close. On the screen you cannot see it but there was only about 12 inches of space between my face and hers. The interview went on for five hours and Miss Alice never flagged.

The topics ranged from her sister’s vivid imagination to Truman Capote’s intense jealousy “because Nelle Harper won the Pulitzer and he did not.”

Asked to account for his aunt’s longevity, Conner said, “Southerners are always attributing things–good and bad–to genes and breeding. Miss Alice comes from good stock.”

Asked how she got this far, Miss Alice said, “I don’t do anything to bring on dying.
I live day by day.”

It took longer than she planned to become a lawyer. The Depression forced her to drop out of Montgomery’s Huntington College after one year. Her parents could not afford the tuition. “People think this is the first time this country’s ever been through anything like this, but I can assure them there has,” she said. Miss Alice moved home and worked at the Monroe Journal until 1937. Then she got a job in the brand new Social Security office in Birmingham and went to school at night.

After Alice Finch Lee passed the bar exam in the summer of 1943, her father asked if she would like to join his firm. “He wasn’t pushing or anything,” she remembered, “He was just being like he’d always been: ‘Do your own thing but do it well.’ ” Miss Alice says she had two questions: “When you grow up in one town, you are always Mr. Lee’s little girl. ‘Would I be an adult separate and apart from you?’ Daddy said, ‘I think you’ve been gone long enough for that not to happen.’ ”

Her second question was: “How is a small town going to react to a woman in a law office? There were not many around those days. And my father smiled and said, ‘You’ll never know until you try.’ ”

Miss Alice has been at her desk at Barnett, Bugg, Lee & Carter ever since and, nearly everyone who has bought property or drawn up a will in Monroe County has relied on her services.

Her memory is sharp. She does the New York Times Sunday crossword puzzle every week and effortlessly tutored an out-of-town visitor in Alabama history, politics, and soil. She sleeps well at night, thanks to some routine bedtime exercises: she recites the names of all the presidents of the United States. If not asleep by the time she gets to Obama, she moves on to list all 53 governors or all 67 counties of Alabama. If still awake, she goes to work on all the vice presidents of the United States or all the first ladies—of Alabama.

She is still a voracious reader of American biographies and history, England between the world wars, and anything about the Mitford sisters. She is keen on splashy criminal proceedings. Recent fascinations include the trials and tribulations of the Brooke Astor estate and Professor Amy Bishop’s murder trial.

At the party, everyone sang happy birthday. Miss Alice blew out one candle in the shape of 100 with three puffs. Not long after the cake was served, the food was put away. Vases of flowers and gifts of chocolate were packed up. Then, it was back to work. The office had been closed for only two hours.

According to her law partner Tonja Carter, Miss Alice has declared there will be no more parties–not until she’s 105.
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Florida Bar's Family Law Section donates for children's legal aid
By Lisa Fingeroot, Tallahassee.com
Apr. 4, 2012

The Family Law Section of the Florida Bar is donating $75,000 to Children’s Legal Services. The contribution will fund an attorney for one year and is part of a broader campaign to raise money to offset state budget cuts.

Money collected from interest earned on the professional trust accounts all attorneys must keep to do business has been used to help finance legal aid for Florida’s children for at least 20 years and is partly responsible for about 25 children’s advocates in the state who are financed through grants given with that money, said Thomas Duggar, a Tallahassee attorney and chairman of the Family Law Section’s Legislative Committee.

Those accounts, however, have been affected by a downturn in the economy and have not generated as much money in the last few years. Since 2008, revenue from that source has fallen about 88 percent according to statistics provided by the Florida Bar.

The donation will help keep legal services available to the state’s children in all kinds of ways, Duggar said. Children both in and out of state custody need free legal help for a variety of reasons – sexual or physical abuse, adoptions, and a myriad of other reasons.

The bar’s NOW campaign name is meant to underscore the urgency of the funding crisis because the available funding is expected to drop even more. Bar officials hope each member of the Florida Bar will commit to donating at least $100 a year for the next several years.

Seeking a lawyer? Alabama State Bar has an app for that
By Eric Velasco, The Birmingham News
March 22, 2012

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama -- Lawyers and members of the public can use their cell phones to look up a lawyer, search for elected officials' contact information and read ethics opinions using a new mobile web-based app by the Alabama State Bar.

The free application, which can be downloaded at www.alabar.org/mobile, is the latest technological tool available to the state bar's 17,000 members, according to a release from the Alabama State Bar.

The app, developed by Kittay New Media of Clifton Park, N.Y., can be used on any type of mobile device. The information available represents the most-viewed sections of the state bar's Web site.
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