Litigators - A Tribute

     I enjoy my court reporting career greatly and have had the privilege of reporting for so many attorneys that are highly skilled and who are such tributes to the legal profession!

     There have historically been loads of jokes and disparaging comments about attorneys banded about, so I wanted to balance this with a positive tribute and share with you one of my favorite writings about trial lawyers by Francis Hare, an attorney from Birmingham, Alabama who was integral in founding both the American Trial Lawyers Association and the Alabama Trial Lawyers Association.

My Learned Friends
(From Memories of a Trial Lawyer)
By Francis Hutcheson Hare 

"I once tried to describe trial lawyers as follows:

There is something different and special about the trial lawyer. You can tell it whenever you go in a courtroom and see any lawyer, old or young, good or bad, when his time comes to stand up and speak in behalf of his client, white or black, right or wrong.

Then, something happens that's unlike anything else on earth; it is like the touch of Midas that turns dust into gold, or the miracle of electricity that turns a few strips of metal into a glowing flame of light.

There is a touch of everything wonderful in the advocacy of a lawyer for his client, in his effort to make the worst appear the better part, or in his effort to defend the right. There is a dash of love in it, and there is a little of the effect of bourbon whiskey; there is a little sex appeal, and more than a little magic.

I have seen a shabby old lawyer that almost literally slept in the street come to court unshaved and disheveled and rise before a jury that came to scoff and remained to pray. Every man who has lived the life of a lawyer knows what I mean and knows that there must be a source of this transformation of personality and power that touches an ordinary man with the Pentecostal fire of an advocate."

To all the attorneys that make my career so enjoyable,
enlightening and fulfilling -- thank you!

Laura