Editorial:
Simple Solution For Our Failing Courts
Give the Courts Back to the Local Citizens

MassNews Staff
March 10, 2003

Although many citizens were startled last week to discover they're not getting the "justice they deserve" from our state courts, the committee which said that to Chief Justice Margaret Marshall is not even close to solving the problem.

We must put the trial courts of Massachusetts back under the control of the local citizens, where they belong. Our publisher, Ed Pawlick, has waited 30 years for someone to realize that.

After practicing in a small Pennsylvania city for 12 years and observing what no one else in Massachusetts has seen, he was totally shocked by the treatment of the judges in this state when he came here in 1972. The shabby, dilapidated courthouses that he saw were also outrageous.

It was immediately apparent why Pennsylvania judges had large, bright offices with their own stenographer, secretary and tipstaff whereas the trial judges in Massachusetts had to rotate from city-to-city, court-to-court, with no place to call home, without a permanent office anywhere, no library to research the law and no staff at all. In Pennsylvania, the courts were totally run by each county and everyone was proud of them. Not so in Massachusetts.

In 2003, we see many of the citizens in Springfield practically in revolt over the way their courts are run. The people in Worcester have long been unhappy about the way they are controlled by Beacon Hill. They are a capable bar. Why can't they run their own courts?

There was one system that Pawlick saw that was worse than Massachusetts. That was in the federal courts of Washington, D.C. While attending George Washington Law School at night, Pawlick worked for the firm of Lloyd Cutler (who was counsel for Pres. Clinton during his darkest hours). It appeared that that court never filed anything. Pleadings were always in piles over the floor of the clerk's office.

In Pennsylvania, they had never heard of civil service like they have in the federal court and Massachusetts. The clerks of the county courts were elected and they hired their own staff. The offices were always clean and the workers were pleasant and hardworking. If they weren't, they would all be replaced at the next election. To make it "worse," the clerks of the court were always lawyers with fulltime practices who spent little time in their county office, but they saw that it was managed effectively.

Pawlick imagines that by now the denizens of Harvard Law School may have been able put the same pressure on Pennsylvania to "improve" their courts as they did to Massachusetts many years ago. This would enable those "scholars" to be in charge instead of the "dolts" out in the provinces. But he hopes not.

(Pawlick attended what has been termed by most as the best law school in the country, Yale Law School, after his first year of night school. One semester there indicated that he would be in the top of the class, but he chose to return to night school, when his money began to run out. He did not want to be forced to work for a "prestigious" firm on Wall Street to pay any debt. Instead, he emerged free and independent and able to observe a microcosm of our society for twelve years.)

Let us be clear. Despite all the lawyer jokes we have heard, we believe that the independent lawyers are the backbone of our society. They have always protected us all from an ever-growing government. Our society would fall without them. They often do this for free as they see poor people who need their help. But they do not scream and yell about it. They quietly go about their job. We hear the lawyer-jokes because the accepted model has become the big firm lawyers who are interested only in how much they are billing per hour and how many hours per week. They are the ones who want to see legal services, so that some other lawyer does the work they don't want to do. There is a huge conflict among lawyers who practice those two different paradigms.

Mass. Bar Association Proves the Point

As if to prove our point, the President of the Mass. Bar Association, Joseph P. J. Vrabel, is already saying that the problem with the courts "still comes down to money" even though the Report noted that this is not true. One wonders if Vrabel has even read the lengthy report. It notes that money and caseloads in the courts have remained "flat" since 1994, while the cost to run them has increased by 79%. The number of employees has risen by 25% (even with the well-publicized layoffs last year).

The Report claims that if it is followed, the result would be "a less expensive and more effective Court system." It says that "the management of the Judiciary is preventing the people of Massachusetts from receiving the justice they deserve."

This President of the lawyer group has openly bragged that he is the first non-practicing lawyer to be elected to that honor. He is Vice President of Capital Risk Management Company in Framingham, which makes prominent use of his election as President to make their company look prestigious.

Vrabel writes, "As a bar association founded by such principled, intellectual giants as Louis D. Brandeis and Oliver Wendell Holmes ." But those practicing lawyers would be aghast at seeing a corporation employee leading the members of the Bar. They didn't have corporate public relations people to promote publicity about their election.

Vrabel wrote in February about the unconstitutional IOLTA project which gives the MBA about $1.7 million to spend on their favorite legal charities for the "poor." (They define who is "poor.") He writes that, "These issues [about IOLTA] need to be discussed openly." But he refuses to do that and ignores those such as Atty. Chester Darling and Suffolk Law School Prof. Charles Rounds, leading opponents of IOLTA, as though they do not exist.

This month, Vrabel is writing about Lobby Day for the Courts, March 18, wherein the lawyers will flood to Beacon Hill to provide even more money for Legal Services, which is given out with great fanfare by the MBA, as though they were personally providing the money. Actually, it's another example of rich lawyers who have never known a poor client, who assuage their guilt by hiring other lawyers with the state money to "help the poor."

The MBA is a private organization which boasts about 18,500 members out of about 65,000 lawyers in the state. Even that small number includes many law students and non-lawyer "legal professionals" such as social workers, but no one will say how many. In addition, all new lawyers are given a free membership and the next five-years are half-price.

Just how many practicing lawyers are members of this group, which doesn't even pretend anymore to have a real lawyer as its president?

Many say that awareness is 90% of solving any problem. When MassNews says that our courts are failing, no lawyer will laugh anymore. The Report noted that the court's "structure is unique among American judiciaries and runs counter to basic management principles."

It even reported that "businesses avoid states with slow, unsteady courts," and our state is ranked for being "slow and costly." We are 45th out of the 50 states, a little ahead of Mississippi.

The first paragraph of the Executive Summary states the following: "Today, the Courts of Massachusetts are mired in managerial confusion. The impact of high-quality judicial decisions is undermined by high cost, slow action, and poor service to the community. The administration and management of the Judiciary is uneven at best, and oftentimes dysfunctional. Morale is near the breaking point, and there is little concern for customer service. Employees cry out for leadership. The public wants reasonably priced, quick, and courteous justice, but often receives the opposite."

Previous stories about our dysfunctional courts may be found in almost every issue of MassNews. Our efforts are finally reaching success. We know that many judges and legislators read the paper and are aware about what we are writing. A few of the many stories about the role of the MBA may be found by searching our archives for IOLTA or Mass. Bar Foundation. Many stories can also be found by searching for "poverty lawyers."