This article was originally published in the July/Aug 2021 issue of San Diego Lawyer Magazine.
By Wilson Adam Schooley
Atticus Finch’s impassioned closing argument in To Kill a Mockingbird concluded, “There is one way in this country in which all men are created equal — there is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller … and the ignorant man the equal of any college president. That institution … is a court of law … I’m no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury system — that is no ideal to me, it is a living, working reality.”
When I stepped from my battered four-cylinder Honda Civic onto the Pacific shores in 1984 after the long drive from Duke Law School, that was the ethos I encountered in the San Diego legal community. I say so with neither hyperbole nor nostalgia. There was a palpable, shared sense that we were all pulling together as officers of the court and tribunes of justice; a communal commitment to core values of fairness, integrity, dignity, and mutual respect.
I learned this “living, working reality” of the little local legal world from lions of our bar. Lawyers like Dutch Higgs, Paul Engstrand, Howard Wiener, Mike Neil, John Seitman, and Judges like Bill Yale, Judy Keep, Earl Gilliam, Bill Focht, and others. It felt to me at the time like sitting at the feet of oracles. They were, of course, just practicing attorneys in our town. But they both embodied and espoused a level of integrity and comity that, in my experience, is exceptional in our country.
From them I discovered San Diego was blessed with more than beautiful weather and beaches; its legal community is truly a community — among the definitions of which is “a feeling of fellowship with others.” There has long been a fellowship among members of the bar here that is unusual in cities of its kind. Although a big city, San Diego had what former Superior Court Judge (and my former law partner) Bill Pate recently described to me as a “small-town feel.”
That “feel” was a function not merely of its size but of its spirit — a combination of fellowship and fealty to principles of civility and integrity. Lawyers in our town who failed to practice with that spirit did not fare well. If a lawyer was uncooperative, uncivil, untrustworthy, or unprincipled, word spread fast. The biggest firms were 30 to 50 lawyers, and lawyers from each firm were regular adversaries and rigorous advocates, but respectful amigos. (The firm I started with, Jennings, Enstrand & Henrikson, merged with Higgs, Fletcher & Mack, and together held an annual picnic with Gray, Cary, Ames & Fry.) The tradition was trust. Most agreements were by handshake or phone call. No one sent confirming letters. As Judge Pate observed, “a reputation is hard to build and easy to destroy.”
The local legal lions preached to me that practicing law was a privilege, a calling, and a responsibility, and those of us fortunate enough to be members of the bar should revere both the law and our fellow practitioners. A sentence from Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin’s Ace in the Hole applied: “Politicians were mostly people who’d had too little morals and ethics to stay lawyers.”
Judge Pate points out another element in the “smalltown feel” was practical experience and engagement. The biggest corporations that hired the big national firms were in Los Angeles or San Francisco. Often, he found, the partners in those blue chip, “white shoe” firms were not so experienced in the real world of courtroom work. They had tried maybe five cases to a jury, while local lawyers often had tried 150 and knew instinctively how to ask questions, listen to answers, and follow up. Their hands-on experience gave them not only expertise in their craft but ease in its execution. Passionate about the letter of the law and pursuit of justice for their clients, they nonetheless kept their practice in perspective. No case and no one was worth sacrificing principles.
Distinguished Judge Lou Welsh (previously an esteemed local trial lawyer known for his unparalleled cross-examinations) wryly replied to an LA lawyer who was explaining how things were done in Los Angeles: “Counsel, we don’t care how you do it in Los Angeles.”
San Diego has grown and changed since my early experiences with and conversations about our local ethos of civility and collegiality, but the framework our forebears built remains. Judge Pate, long retired from the bench but a working mediator, says he still sees that inherent civility among San Diego lawyers practicing before him. Walter Scott said: “A lawyer without history or literature is a mechanic, a mere working mason; if he possesses some knowledge of these, he may venture to call himself an architect.” If we know and hold close our local history of ethical civility, we can be the architects of a future not far afield from it.
Wilson Adam Schooley is a reformed big firm partner and current appellate specialist practicing primarily civil rights and indigent criminal defense law; a professional actor; published author and photographer; Past Chair of the ABA Civil Rights and Social Justice Section; member of the ABA Journal Board of Editors; Delegate to the ABA House of Delegates; Presidential Appointee to the Coalition for Racial and Ethnic Justice; and member of the SDCBA Board of Directors.