(Excerpted from the June 1986 Bar Bulletin)
The 1948 graduating law school class was different. In 1946, it had been the largest entering class, many of the students being World War II veterans. Older, perhaps more serious, and very eager to get through school and on to law practice, they were the beneficiaries of special legislation introduced by Representative Bob Grieve that gave them two quarters of law school credit for their military service. By going to school full time during the summer, they completed the four-year law school course in two-and-a-half years and were ready to get on with it. They were not interested in spinning their wheels.
There was such a desperate need for lawyers in 1948 that, after sitting for the bar exam on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, the graduates got their bar results a week and a half later because no judge or lawyer would speak to any of the bar examiners until they finished grading the exam.
Armed with their law degrees and newly admitted to the bar, this eager group decided to tackle the Seattle Bar Association. They had quickly realized that they were long on book knowledge but short on practical knowledge, so they decided to form a committee in the bar association to help get the nuts and bolts of law practice. Thus, the Young Lawyers Committee was formed in 1949.
Jack Veblen, the first chair, recalls the quid pro quo of persuading the older lawyers to come and teach them the nuts and bolts at their luncheon meetings. In exchange, the young lawyers signed up for the Speakers Bureau and they went off on assignment into the community to talk to groups seeking a speaker on current legislation, legal rights or whatever was requested.
Public spirited, eager to learn and willing to work hard, these early Young Lawyer Committees formed the backbone of the bar association’s Legal Aid Committee. It was financed each year by a fund-raising drive within the practicing bar, which then donated time to provide legal assistance for those without the means to afford it. The year that Jack Schofield had the job of raising funds, the bar contributed $35,000, which was used to help attorneys who ended up with particularly expensive or complicated cases with payment of costs. By 1956, the young lawyers had expanded their pro bono work to the juvenile court, where they acted as guardians ad litem without compensation.
In 1957, there were major structural changes instituted by Charles Horowitz, president of the Bar Association. The first change was to form “sections,” the purpose of which was, as Vice President Frank J. Eberharter wrote, to give members of the bar “the opportunity of specializing in the fields of their interest.” Within a month, the bar committees were completely reorganized as well. William Wesselhoeft recalls that Charles Horowitz was especially enthusiastic about the formation of the section for young lawyers. Horowitz convinced Wesselhoeft to chair the section, firmly believing it would be good for young lawyers and would provide continuing education and assistance in starting practice. The group of new lawyers was rapidly growing; that year, for the first time, there were so many prospective admittees to federal court that they were admitted en masse rather than making a trip to the courthouse with a sponsor to be admitted individually.
The name of the section lasted about six months. As the Bar Bulletin commented, the “youthful and independent” young lawyers didn’t care for the original “junior bar conference,” and the Young Lawyers Section was born. Twelve years later, Judge Charles Horowitz, acting chief judge of the newly created Court of Appeals, returned to the section he had helped to create and gave a major address to the YLS on the new Uniform Probate Code.
The progeny of the 1950s nuts and bolts presentations continued into the 1960s. As the Bar Bulletin described the practice and procedure clinics organized by the “go getter” young lawyers, it was frequently noted that “many of those in attendance are not the newest members of the bar.” Then Court Commissioner Robert Utter addressed the young lawyers on the topic of juvenile court. John Mucklestone talked about justice court. Ken MacDonald was complimented for having brought Osmund K. Fraenkel from New Your to talk on civil liberties.
In 1966, the young lawyers started a project that is the forerunner of the current Youth and the Law Committee, the High School Lawyer Liaison Committee. An attorney hooked up with every high school in the city for the purpose of assisting educators, especially civics and guidance teachers, in the activities of the school relating to law. Every year a series of booklets was printed with outlines for the speakers on subjects of special interest to high school students.
The pro bono commitment of the section deepened in these years. From 1966 to 1967, the Juvenile Court Committee provided lawyers for 150 appointments in the court.
The Law and Poverty Committee implemented another commitment. A report had been issued by former SKCBA President Charles Horowitz on the delivery of legal services to the poor and a new Seattle-King County legal services center was formed pursuant to the recommendations of that report, to be funded under the Economic Opportunity Act. The local bar made a commitment to organize 1,250 hours of volunteer lawyer time, but only 500 had been found. YLS Chair Thomas Zilly made a commitment to SKCBA President Willard Wright that YLS would meet the remaining commitment, up to and including the 750 hours remaining, if necessary. The Section met the commitment.
Zilly was concerned throughout his term as chair in looking for ways in which to allow the young lawyers to become more active in bar association matters. He asked Wright to consider young lawyers when appointing future board members for the Legal Services Center and to give YLS an opportunity to sit on the committee choosing the new SKCBA director.
In 1969, the YLS, under the chairmanship of Llewellyn Pritchard, was designated the “watchdog” of the bar association in order to coordinate and monitor the implementation of the “Kramer Report,” issued by the Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Civil Disorder. The report was entitled “Race and Violence in the State of Washington” and had more than 90 specific recommendations. The YLS Contemporary Legal Problems Committee was charged by the SKCBA Board with keeping a running tally on the various programs for implementing the Kramer Report.
In January 1970, the YLS, with university law students, began the LAMP Committee: “Legal Aid to McNeil Prisoners,” chaired by Larry L. Barokas. The program, initiated and financed by the Federal Judicial Center and the Washington State Bar Association, assisted prisoners at McNeil Island federal penitentiary with civil and criminal problems.
In 1972, an unusually large number of contested judicial elections were anticipated in King County. Seven out of 26 superior court judges were vacating their positions. In past years, the Seattle Bar Association had conducted a mail ballot of its members to determine which candidates were preferred. The result was a popularity rating, based only upon the total votes each candidate received. Barbara Rothstein, secretary of the YLS, was appointed chair of the Court Reform Committee, which came up with a proposal for a “Court Reform Judicial Evaluation Plan.” The Section agreed that something more substantive would be a service to the public, and set up a panel to interview judicial candidates for re-election, and then to publish a description of the committee’s impressions of the candidates. The committee included lay people, which was not only innovative but unheard of, according to Rothstein.
The senior bar took a look at the plan and approved it on July 19, 1972, resolving to work jointly with YLS toward its implementation. A Judicial Evalua-tion Committee was formed to conduct the interview, consisting of “respected and community-minded persons of broad experience.” [This group became what is today the Judicial Screening Committee.]
Considerable controversy developed within the Bar after the formation of the Judicial Evaluation Committee was announced. Several Seattle attorneys filed suit against SKCBA on the theory that inclusion of lay people on the panel was some type of unconstitutional delegation of attorneys’ responsibilities. After the lawsuit failed, a petition was signed by 21 lawyers demanding a special meeting of the entire SKCBA membership to seek repudiation of the project. After a lengthy and stormy standing-room-only meeting in the Olympic Hotel Ballroom, the membership narrowly voted against the repudiation, and the plan was implemented for a year, but suspended in 1973 while SKCBA decided to study the issue further.
The interest of the YLS was not dampened. In 1978, while Lish Whitson was chair, the ABA published a handbook on ways to upgrade local judiciaries, including methods of conducting a credible survey among the bar. The only ongoing SKCBA involvement was the mail ballot preference polling of lawyers during the general elections in 1972 and 1976, together with the senior bar’s efforts to suggest to the Governor that he implement some type of evaluation of the judiciary.
Through the years, the YLS has been very generous in funding projects consistent with its goals and mission. A major reason for the Section’s ability to fund such projects was the financial success of the Washington Lawyer Practice Manual. Lowell Halverson traces the inception of the Practice Manual to a snowy day in the early ’70s. Impressed by the quality of the YLS Bridging the Gap seminar he had attended and overwhelmed by what he hadn’t gotten in law school, Halverson figured he could just go over to the bar office and review the other Bridging the Gap CLE materials from previous seminars and pick up this missing information. After realizing that nothing existed which could present a comprehensive review of the basics of legal practice to the new lawyer, he decided to try to put it together. This is exactly what he and Joseph Murphy did from 1972 to 1976, winning an ABA Award of Achievement for the single most outstanding project in the country.
Another major project has been the Neighbor-hood Legal Clinics, now in eight locations in King County. The first prototype legal clinic was formed in 1975 by Phil Cutler, with Joe Gaffney and Joe Murphy. The 1980 YLS Board made it a goal to open a Southeast, Southwest, Central Area and Lake City clinic. Existing clinics in Fremont and Capitol Hill were incorporated into the system in 1981, largely through the efforts of Michael Killeen. A part-time coordinator was hired in 1981 with an ABA Young Lawyers Division grant.
In 1980, the Section did a comprehensive survey on the status of women in the legal profession. In 1981, the YLS Minority Representation in the Law Committee was formed to address issues of concern to minority students, including the lack of employment opportunities. In response to a request by SKCBA and YLS, the U.W. Law School surveyed past graduates and found the percentage of minorities employed by law firms to be substantially lower than overall, with most in the public sector. Admission and enrollment of minority students had steadily declined from 1977 to the present at both U.W. and UPS. To assist in placement, the Committee published a directory of resumes of minority law students interested in private sector employment, available to all local firms upon request. To try to improve the bar’s track record for minority applicants for the bar, a Bar Tutorial Project was formed.
In 1983 and 1984, the Non-English Speaking Task Force successfully drafted legislation to make court interpreters available to all civil litigants not fluent in English. There was ample precedent for a YLS foray into the legislative arena. In 1972, the Women and Civil Rights Committee, chaired by Betty Bracelin, had been instrumental in helping draft the Washington Equal Rights Amendment and the Equal Management of Community Property Act.
The YLS has certainly never shied away from controversy. But it has likewise never avoided its commitment to public service and to improve the quality of the legal profession. From the inception of the idea by those eager young lawyers in 1949, and over the years, there is a lot of history to inspire the current generation who has inherited membership in the Section. Space does not permit mention of all their names or a description of all their work. It is a privilege to be a member of the organization they built.
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U.S. District Court Magistrate Mary Alice Theiler was the chairperson of the Young Lawyers Section and a recently elected member of the Seattle-King County Bar Association Board of Trustees when she wrote this article in 1986.
