Lawyers (sent to the Winston-Salem Journal as a Letter; not published)

 For a well-educated bunch, lawyers can do some stupid things.

o The Chief Judge of New York’s respected highest court wrote that the law was “A Profession…not a business… that it was distinguished by …a duty to subordinate financial reward to social responsibility…”  What lawyers was he talking about?  Those in lower trial courts in Forsyth or in New York County?

o Responding to criticism of a published survey of lawyers about the judges they practiced before, the results of which were subject to manipulation by lawyers belonging to “affinity groups” from which candidates running against some of the judges were drawn, the President of one   Bar group indicated surprise that any lawyer would blemish his good name by deliberately ranking a judge as poorly qualified in order to aid a challenger.  Gee whiz!  Really! Even a Dean of the Harvard Law School has gone to jail. That Bar group will field a similar survey again.

o The lawyers of the Forsyth County Bar Association elevated to its Presidency a Judge, beloved in the community, whose conduct had been characterized by the Supreme Court  as being “egregious” and who was found to have continued to engage “…in a pattern of behavior after she was privately cautioned by the [Disciplinary] Commission in 2006 for substantially similar conduct.”  It should be noted that the FCBA exists to “…foster and maintain a high standard of integrity [and] honor…in the legal profession.”  High standard?

It saddened me to resign from the FCBA.