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I graduated from BYU’s J. Reuben Clark Law School (and it treated me wonderfully; with negligible exception, the professors were great (even the ones I didn’t like or who didn’t like me); the facilities were top-notch; my fellow students were predominantly good, sharp, solid citizens, and the school took care of the students as well as could be expected of a school producing lawyers).  I recently received an e-mail from the law school quoting Sandra Day O’Connor:

“As a lawyer you are not just an advocate for your client.  You are a representative of the law.  It is your duty not only to act according to the highest ethical standards but to make sure that you speak up when others intend to do otherwise.  Your highest fidelity is to the law; you serve your clients best by making sure that they understand the duties imposed on them both under the letter and under the spirit of the law.”  –Sandra Day O’Connor, “On Being Ethical Lawyers,” Life in the Law: Service & Integrity, 31, 2009.

I could not put it more clearly or concisely myself.  This is how lawyers and other jurists should be.  It’s what the public expects.  It’s the least we can offer it.   But in the field of Utah family law, many (too many) lawyers aren’t this way; they just aren’t.  Of course there are a few (fewer than I’d originally believed, fewer than I had hoped) who embody Justice O’Connor’s words, but they are outnumbered.  I am truly pained and sorry to acknowledge this, but my statements are true and only those who lie and/or delude themselves deny my claims.  Far, far too many of the family law attorneys in Utah are ignorant, lazy, and/or crooked.  With a few fundamental behavioral improvements (and no, by “behavioral improvements” I do not mean the spending of more money, the passage of more rules, the attending of more continuing education seminars, or the misguided belief that the system needs more “civility” as the meaning of the word  has been twisted to the point that it recognizable only as a term of art) the practice of family law in Utah could easily be of consistently, beneficially higher quality in every respect.

“The only reason this system works is that everybody pretends not to notice what’s going on.  You don’t watch, you don’t stare, you don’t talk about it, you try not to even see it.”

–Orson Scott Card, Pathfinder

Our problem is apathy, but who cares?

–Anonymous

Now I know what you’re thinking:  ”Johnson must have lost a big case and is being a sore loser.”  No, I haven’t lost a big case (that may come soon enough, but that’s not what is motivating me).  Frankly, whether I win or lose a case, I still feel the same way–a win is often marred by disappointment in how hard it was for simple fairness and equity to prevail.  And an undeserved loss too often comes as no surprise.  While I cannot speak authoritatively as to how the Utah courts and lawyers function in other areas of litigation, I can tell you in my experience that family law, as it is promulgated in the legislature and administered by the courts, only “works” because nobody wants to acknowledge the glaring faults and defects in it.  So nobody does.  Consequently, no flaws are “known” because nobody’s watching, nobody’s  discussing, and those in and running the system try not to even see the flaws.   The occasional P.R. sop merely serves to distract our attention as Rome burns.   It doesn’t need to be this way, but for those of us in the profession who aren’t in it first to make a buck, it comes as no surprise that it so often is.  What we family lawyers have created is not what the public needs or wants, and the legal profession knows it.   We know it, but won’t admit it or have the decency or courage to make a change.   Too few of us care sufficiently to acknowledge  the flaws in the system and then commit to repair and improve it.  Between the opposing interests of the legal profession and of the public the lawyers (and by lawyers I mean the judiciary and other state agencies too) have constructed or allowed to be constructed a system built to fail.  Built to fail families, built to fail children, built to fail society at large, built to fail reason, common sense, and fairness.  Consequently, we lawyers know our stature and authority  are deservedly waning in the public eye.

What should be done?  I have some ideas, both for the profession and for the public, which I will humbly, but bluntly, share in future posts.

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