Book Reviews
This Month's Featured Selections
Big Trouble: A Murder in a Small
Midwestern Town
By J. Anthony Lukas
(New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 1997).
$13.60. 875 pgs.
Reviewed by Julia Belt
Big Trouble: A Murder in a Small Western Town Sets Off a Struggle
for the Soul of America is the story of a murder and a trial in the
American West in the early 1900s. After an itinerant miner confessed to
murdering a former governor of Idaho, three officers of the Western
Federation of Miners were kidnapped in Denver and taken to Idaho for
trial on conspiracy charges. Officials and mine owners in Colorado
believed that normal legal processes could not deal with union
malefactors. They exported their problem to Idaho and helped finance the
trial, in essence saying (according to Lukas), "Here are the bodies,
here is the money, please kill them for us."
Clarence Darrow led the defense; William Borah, newly elected U.S.
Senator, lead the prosecution. During voir dire counsel used reports
prepared by "scouts" who had gone into the surrounding county posing as
salesmen to elicit pro or anti-union sympathies from prospective jurors.
For closing arguments, both sides warmed up with an initial 19 hours.
Then the stars, Darrow and Borah, summed up for another 20 hours.
Beyond the violent conflict between the western miners' union and
mine owners and government, Big Trouble depicts characters
ranging from President William McKinley to actress Ethel Barrymore; from
baseball star Walter Johnson to the founder of the Pinkerton Detective
Agency. The digressions from the events of the murder and trial are
fascinating accounts of turn-of-the-century America. We see why national
private detective agencies developed, or learn the history of
African-American troops in the U.S. Army. Occasionally the digressions
are irritating either too much detail on a minor point, or the author
breaks away from the trial action too often. Big Trouble is a
useful and entertaining resource to understand the tapestry of American
society at this century's beginning.
Lawyers, Money, and Success: The Consequences of
Dollar Obsession
By Macklin Fleming
(Westport, CT: Quorum Books, 1998).
$55. 168 pgs.
Reviewed by Joseph C. Mrazek
This slim volume is packed with ideas and information. Fleming
correctly diagnoses many of the American legal industry's woes as well
as those of its dissatisfied practitioners, especially at large law
firms. He begins by sketching the rise of such firms as Covington &
Burling since the late 1800s as cost-effective counsel for large
corporations.
The book's focus, however, is on the moral decline of the large law
firm in more recent times. Fleming cites the fraud, overbilling, and
other scandals of the 1980s and 90s as symptoms of a general sickness
among blue-chip lawyers. He supports his sometimes controversial
contentions with convincing authorities, statistics, and anecdotes.
Fleming links, among other things, the typical modern large-firm
lawyer's obsession with high income and ornate offices to the increasing
public distrust of lawyers. He also explains how the phenomenal growth
of large firms (Jones Day in Cleveland, for example, expanded from just
26 attorneys in 1937 to more than 1,100 in 1995) has forced small firms,
sole practitioners, and government lawyers into a less prestigious and
poorer "southern hemisphere" of legal services.
Yet the author's prescriptions for remedying big-firm malaise are
less convincing. Although taking steps to increase productivity and
allowing associates to become well-rounded trial attorneys surely may
help some large firms survive, such measures do not constitute a
panacea. To his credit, Fleming remains an idealist at age 86. His
occasional naivete may be forgiven because he genuinely wants to restore
the legal profession to a more respectable status.
A former justice of the California Court of Appeals, Fleming has 55
years of experience in private and public practice. He brings wisdom,
erudition, and a gift for clear, engaging writing to the subject. He
effectively makes points by using apt analogies, mostly drawn from
history: "The legal war machine goes into action before any objective is
selected or campaign mapped, much as masses of infantry were deployed in
World War I." (p. 109)
Nevertheless, Lawyers, Money and Success offers a
disappointingly tidy and unduly optimistic conclusion, rife with dubious
assumptions:
"Once the large law firm gets its house in order by adjusting its
operations to today's competitive markets, by creating working
conditions for its lawyers that reconcile collaborative efforts with
professional recognition and collegiality, and by putting the importance
of money into proper perspective, the bulk of the legal profession will
follow suit. Those elements of the profession that do not will risk
extinction." (p. 138)
Fleming fails to note certain significant developments in legal
practice such as the recent explosion of interest among new lawyers in
public interest law that already are eroding the primacy of the large
firm.
Even so, he offers us the kind of book rarely written by lawyers
anymore: one that is rich in insights as well as a pleasure to read.
Cardozo
By Andrew L. Kaufman
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998).
$55. 578 pgs.
Reviewed by Jack Stark
Benjamin Cardozo - because of his stature as a human being and as a
judge and because of his substantial importance in American legal
history - certainly deserves a biography. After roughly 30 years of
intermittent work on that project, Andrew Kaufman has published
Cardozo, a book that measures up to its lofty subject.
Cardozo's fame derives from The Nature of the Judicial
Process, his intellectual prowess, his prose style, a number of
landmark opinions (such as Palsgraf) and his exemplification of
legal realism and progressivism. Kaufman meticulously illustrates and
explains the first four of those reasons for Cardozo's fame. His most
impressive achievement in this book, however, is his finely nuanced
explanation of the fifth reason; of the degree to which, and the kinds
of occasions upon which, Cardozo used public policy considerations to
help him decide a case and of the methods that he used when he did so.
Kaufman demonstrates that Cardozo did not indiscriminately and
frequently let his notions of correct public policy influence his
decisions, but that in certain limited circumstances he minimally
advanced the law along the lines that he perceived American society to
be developing.
The most difficult task that confronts a biographer whose subject did
intellectual work and left a body of texts is to relate that subject's
life to his or her work. Such a biographer needs to avoid the extremes
of assuming that the life and the work are separate and of assuming that
the life totally determines the work. Kaufman discretely relates the
major facets of Cardozo's life; such as his Judaism, the disgrace of his
father (a trial court judge), his family relations, and his sense of his
own and his ancestors' worth; to Cardozo's work as a judge. In the
process he shows that Cardozo was less than a saint and less than a
perfect judge but close to being both.
The only way in which this book disappointed me is that Kaufman did
not apply his considerable skill and discretion and his tireless
research in order to explain more of the relations between, on the one
hand, Cardozo's voracious reading and, on the other hand, his legal
opinions and his conceptions of the law and of a judge's proper
role.
Every Wisconsin judge would likely be interested by, and certainly
would profit from reading, Kaufman's Cardozo. Many lawyers also
would find it worthwhile. Because Kaufman explains technical legal terms
and writes clearly and gracefully, many nonlawyers also would enjoy this
book. Of it Cardozo himself might have written, "into a stunning mosaic
that accurately reveals the face of a man has Andrew Kaufman converted
thousands of carefully chosen and carefully shaped tesserae."
Running a Law Practice
on a Shoestring
By Theda C. Snyder
(Chicago, IL: ABA Law Practice Management Section, 1998).
$39.95. 176 pgs.
Reviewed by Andrew S. Gollin
The biggest problem for most practicing attorneys is that they are
not familiar with how to run a business. For most middle-to-large size
firms, this problem often is solved by hiring an office manager.
However, small firms and solo practitioners must rely upon their own
wits and experience, and this book is designed to help them.
Theda C. Synder covers a range of topics such as: allocating your
time, managing your money, locating office space, buying versus leasing
office equipment, learning about the Internet, hiring employees, and
much more. She outlines easy-to-understand methods that can be
implemented to save both time and money. The book includes phone numbers
and email addresses for businesses and agencies that provide free or
inexpensive services. For example, the book discusses situations in
which you can save money by informing the merchant that you are a member
of the state or national bar association. I personally found the chapter
on how to minimize your travel expenses to be insightful.
The book would be most useful for recent law school graduates that
need a crash course in how to start and run a successful business. It
also may be useful for more established attorneys who simply want to
find ways to cut costs. And while the book probably is intended for
smaller firms or solo practitioners, it includes several tips that even
the larger firms could use.
Wisconsin
Lawyer
