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Volume 4, Number 2 (1979) reprinted by permission Legal Studies Forum ADVERTISEMENTS FOR THE LEGAL SELF: A REVIEW OF CONTEMPORARY LAWYERS' AUTOBIOGRAPHIES DAVID RAY PAPKE American Sudies, Yale University humanistic glass. Lawyers saw the law as a rich coordinate of the Bible and literature and themselves as gentlemen. Practice sometimes betrayed these pleasing visions, but at least the image was easy to face. Today hardly anyone--lawyers included--would mistake a lawyer for a gentleman. A rare attorney such as Louis Nizer writing in his recent Re- flections Without Mirrors still refers to the humanistic model, but most attorneys are of a more contemporary mind. In their brightly packaged pro- fessional autobiographies they present self-images grounded in profit- oriented deals and fast-talking. And the reader or consumer of legal services is left with his worst fears concerning the contemporary bar thoroughly con- firmed. The case is strongest against Melvin Belli who has chosen to tell his tale in My Life on Trial. Belli aspires to the image of the cowboy. Born in the foothills of the High Sierras, he insists his clothes have a western cut and his penthouse resembles an 1890's San Francisco whorehouse. Belli laughs at his cliched image, but after following him through case after case, the reader realizes that on another level Belli is, as they might say in his romanticized West, "plumb serious." As is often the case with autobiography, particularly pedestrian auto- biography, the author tells the reader much more about himself than he ever intended or realized. Indeed, Belli's string of anecdotes makes the reader wince: Belli shaves his head as a young boy; Belli runs naked down the Berkeley streets as a college student; Belli pages himself in the Orly In- ternational Airport. Through it all the reader detects a need for attention, approval and perhaps counseling from a non-legal professional. As the proclaimed King of Torts, Belli envisions himself benevolently reigning in the realm of personal injury litigation. Relying on demonstra- tive evidence to sway juries, he litigates suit after civil suit for damages on behalf of injured plaintiffs. Early in his career Belli purportedly succeeded in enlarging the standard amount a plaintiff could expect from an insurance company or employer. As a result, he is inclined to commend him- self for slaying the establishment dragon on behalf of the fabled "little guy." But a reader familiar with the workings of personal injury litigation might be skeptical. After all, most personal injury cases bring the plain- tiff's lawyer a contingency fee, that is, a percentage of the award or settlement. Given the way Belli boasts of his yacht, office and travels and even supplies pictures of his five wives as if they were baubles on his string of life, one suspects Belll's personal injury litigation edifice has a materialistic rather than moral foundation. Furthermore, does this legal cowboy really identify with the little guy? After graduating from Boalt Hall he worked briefly for the federal govern- ment spying on hobos, and then he campaigned against Upton Sinclair when the latter ran for the California governorship. Even much later, as an estab- lished lawyer, Belli refers to some of the little guys as "wackos." When the readers of My Life on Trial return their verdict, Melvin Belli seems destined to lose. It is insufficient to devote several hundred pages to self-praise. Belli does quote a number of acquaintances who are impressed with him. He does suggest an Order of the Legal Garter and then includes himself in this list of celebrated attorneys. Yet, a different impression lingers: Belli is an ambitious and aggressive lawyer who rode into town at just the time of a major gold strike in the surrounding hills. If we leave Melvin Belli, the San Francisco cowboy, for Boston's F. Lee Bailey, we find the latter aspiring to another familiar heroic form: the pilot or aviator. Bailey has written two autobiographical works, The Defense Never Rests and For the Defense, and in each the lawyer as latter day Lindbergh soars through the legal system as "velvet sky." Bailey asserts that were he the proprietor of a school for lawyers, he would insist the students learn to fly: I would send them up when the weather was rough,Back on earth, Bailey also blends the traditional Horatio Alger tale into his heroic self-imagery. He grew up in Waltham, Massachusetts, a tough New England town which in Bailey's youth was the center of the clock manu- facturing industry. Bailey struggled in the Waltham public schools but then, thanks to scholarships, studied at a private secondary school and Harvard College. After a stint in the Marine Corps he attended Boston University Law School and was on his way to a legal career. However, as is inevitably true in the autobiographies of American lawyers, the author reports that his early days in practice were demanding and impoverished. Why is it that every published lawyer stresses his days in the school of hard knocks? In our crazy national mythology the independ- ent cowboy-aviator-lawyer is not only the classic hero but also quite pre- dictably self-made. Much like Melvin Belli and his touted demonstrative evidence, Bailey first made his mark in the profession with a specialized tool: the poly- graph. In his autobiographies Bailey extolls the virtues of the lie detector. His repetitive accounts of battles to gain acceptance of poly- graph tests as evidence are boring, but when assembled, they constitute a curious endorsement of technology as truth. Once again, Bailey is thoroughly in the American grain. Bailey uses the polygraph primarily in criminal law work, a field which early in his career subjected him to pangs of low status similar to those stabbing the personal injury lawyer. Indeed, on some professional hier- archies, criminal lawyers rank even lower than personal injury lawyers. When Bailey's mother boasts of his success in the criminal courts, her spinster friend astutely replies, "I suppose when he's starting out, he has to take whatever he can get." By today Bailey has presumably overcome his status anxiety, but still, one wonders about his tendency to slap himself on the back. Much like Belli, Bailey lists the best lawyers in the country and places his own name at the top of the list. He also speaks of the special drinking abilities and robust frankness of trial lawyers and deludes himself into thinking that, in their respective eras, Clarence Darrow and he are comparable leaders of the liti- gation bar. Both of Bailey's autobiographical works revolve around his most famous cases. The tales are presented like Erle Stanley Gardner's "Perry Mason" stories, with dramatic courtroom scenes, scintillating cross examinations by the hero and nail-biting finales. At one point Bailey even resorts, one hopes tongue in cheek, to a Gardneresque cast of characters, complete with humorous capsule descriptions. Bailey's most intriguing report concerns his representation of Albert De Salvo, the confessed Boston strangler. The tale, for obvious reasons, does not culminate in the familiar verdict of innocent, but Bailey is at his best sketching a deterministic criminology and conveying De Salvo's chilling recollections. Bailey even appends an epilogue to the De Salvo chapter, one blessed with introspective qualms about the ultimate viability of the Ameril- can legal system. In the end Bailey's autobiographical works are twice as numerous as Belli's, but only slightly move appealing. Both authors would have the reader believe they are tribunes for the people--one in the saddle, the other in the cockpit--but skepticism is advised. The reader need only re- member that after a recent Portland jet crash killed 10 and injured 65, Bailey rushed an advertisement into a Portland newspaper announcing that he handles wrongful death and personal injury cases arising out of aircraft disasters. Is there any hope for the humanistic model among the superstars of the American bar? Yes, but only in the person of Louis Nizer. His most recent autobiographical.work, Reflections Without Mirrors, is a winsome supplement to his earlier My Life in Court and The Jury Returns. All three introduce the reader to a lawyer who defines himself not as macho adventurer but as sensitive artist. Devotees of Nizer's autobiographical works will concede that Reflections Without Mirrors is slightly inferior to the earlier works. Nizer is now 77, and as he looks all the way back to his boyhood in a one-room apartment be- hind a Brooklyn cleaner's, he tends to ramble and pontificate. He reflects on "the future of mankind," he reveals an out-dated sexism when discussing divorce rates and is too beguiled by the space program. And indeed, Nizer seems aware of these tendencies when he characterizes the work as "selective." Yet despite minor problems Reflections Without Mirrors is superior to anything written by Melvin Belli or F. Lee Bailey. Ironically, Nizer is the only one of the three who makes due without a professional writer to tune his prose. He can be turgid and legalistic, employing words such as "sequellae" and succumbing to his profession's passion for passive and in- verse constructions. But a graceful dignity salvages his prose and ultimately charms the reader. Nizer has a taste for the delicacies of thought and language. In My Life in Court he is uneasy revealing that pre-trial jitters force frequent visits to the toilet, and in Reflections Without Mirrors he chastises Richard Nixon for using inelegant phrases such as "screwed up." F. Lee Bailey, meanwhile, refuses to apologize for using the term "Jap," and he announces plans "to tear a witness a new asshole." Nizer's approach to language is a part of his professional self-image. When a divorce case thunders like a "symphony crescendo," a courtroom summation is "a mosaic of persuasion" and well crafted arguments resemble "lustrous drapes," Nizer is the lawyer as artist. Rather than boastful bravado, he proffers reflective sensitivity. Although Reflections Without Mirrors touches everything from voice lessons to the personalities of New York City majors, Nizer is at his best with legal topics. Like Belli and Bailey, he recounts his most intriguing cases, customarily introducing each with a concise critique of the relevant area of the law. Unlike Belli and Bailey, Nizer allows his clients to occupy center stage. The clients' stories radiate provocatively, and all Nizer's books concern much more than Nizer himself. Not surprisingly, Nizer approaches his clients with the same gentleness he uses with language and lawyerly artifice. There are no "wackos" among them, and even easily stereotyped personalities such as Truman Capote and Jacqueline Suzanne are portrayed as sympathetic and multifaceted. While Melvin Belli, by way of contrast, describes explicitly a client whose breast surgery was terribly botched, Nizer looks for and locates the nobility of the human spirit. Nizer's reward is a transcendence of the legal profession's status differentials. To be sure, he practices in a large New York law firm and on occasion does prestigious corporate law work, but he also handles divorce, personal injury and criminal cases. Regardless of the type of legal work Nizer betrays little awareness of his profession's pervasive stratification. His only prescription is that lawyers of all kinds possess a sense of honor. Beyond reports of his actual cases Nizer is also a resource on general legal topics. Filled with wonder about the law, he reflects on the history of juries and the boundaries of Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence. Even the Marxist who might be troubled by Nizer's graceful false consciousness would commend his chapter on pornography. It is a superb essay combining legal defini- tions, movie reviews, an insider's view of arguing before the Supreme Court, political science lessons and--last but most delightful--a refined demolition of Justice Rehnquist's intellectual capabilities. Perhaps the only legal topic covered by Belli and Bailey which Nizer disregards is the operation of bar grievance committees. Their personal experiences answering charges of unprofessional conduct make Belli and Bailey experts on this topic. Both decry the way they have been treated, an exer- cised lament which quickly conveys the reader to the side of the grievance committees. Nizer, on the other hand, secure in the belief that an attorney should absorb heat for his client rather than generate it, emerges as a model for propriety. Since the Supreme Court has ruled that contrary to bar association strictures lawyers may advertise, the reader might approach these half dozen works as advertisements for the legal self. As cowboy, aviator and artist, the authors grow into and out of their self-images, and they also employ the self-images as their major advertising ploys. The first two self-images are suggestive of the twentieth century devolution of the American bar. The smart consumer, meanwhile, opts for the third. |
