BULLETINS FROM ALOHA

I did it because I know you didn't have the time as George Carlin used to put it.  I dutifully attended the Oregon State Bar Board of Governor's (BOG) meeting in Salem, Oregon on Friday, February 6, 2009 and you didn't  "... because I had the time".   Here is the Good, the Bad and the Ugly about that meeting in Salem:

• The Good  - -  The Bar has new leadership at the top.
• The Bad    - -   There are not enough new (or any) ideas at the Board of Governors.
• The Ugly   - -   The Oregon State Bar Board of Governors really does nothing for the good of the membership nor the public.  (Yes, Bar staff, I know you do a LOT for the good of the order....)

The Good -- It is a new year. We have a new Bar building. We have a new Oregon State Bar Executive Director. We have a (new?) Oregon Bar President. There is reason for optimism.

Although, it goes against the grain for a resident cynic; I must say it -- I was favorably impressed with the new Executive Director of the Oregon State Bar, Teresa Schmid from Arizona, at this meeting. After years of Celene Greene and Karen Garst, the Oregon State Bar deserves a break. I am going to try to interview Ms. Schmid and if I am successful, I will provide a better look at her and her aspirations for the Bar for your future viewing pleasure here.

Then there is Gerry Gaydos, the new? Bar President. He received a full color spread in The Bulletin (the pathetic official Bar publication), so I direct your attention there. I know Gerry, and he is a good man. But, is he one of THEM? I fear he is. There is no way to overstate the sad currents that force a good man like Gerry to be a cheer leader for the oligarchy that is our Bar. That is a good segue to ----

The Bad -- Every year the Board of Governors is supposed to have a turnover of leadership of four BOG members. That has seldom happened in the last eight years. Indeed, Gerry has been on the BOG for the last eight consecutive years. There are other usual suspects who have lingered on and on and just won't go away. Gerry, being the good sycophant had his pals Bill Carter and Mark Comstock as speakers at this BOG meeting. These are insidious, tired old BOG members from six years ago. There are some lawyers in Oregon that love (or are addicted to)  the rush of OSB leadership, but unfortunately, they are the wrong people. They are sycophants and parasites who get a thrill (or business) by being close to where the power lies. Ward Greene is such a person. They crowd out new blood where new ideas are missing. The rats keep going down the same rat hole. The same pigs keep occupying the same pig pen.

The Ugly -- The worst thing that occurs at BOG meetings may be the best thing. Nothing. Nothing happens at BOG meetings. It is laughable. With my eager, new BOG puppy-dog eyes, I attended a costly OSB ‘Strategic Planning' series of seminars in 2002-2004 as a BOG member. The idea was that we were supposed to come up with "BREAKTHROUGH (as opposed to incremental) CHANGE" ideas for the good of the cause. It never happened.  The effort was diluted into the plain vanilla Member Services Committee instead of being assigned to one of the many 'Futures' committees.  Why?  Because Ms. Garst did not want change.    A 1/30/04 Karen Garst memo reports on all the "Futures" committees we have had over the last twenty years (five of them) going back to the 1990's. Meanwhile, there was a Futures Committee headed up by that ubiquitous Ed Harndon that had been in business for years. In fact, former Bar President Dennis Karnopp recommended in a 10/6/03 memo that the Bar have a permanent Futures Committee.

Bear With Me Here Please!

Guess what. Gerry, in The Bulletin, talks of the importance of the 'Futures' concept again, now in 2009. Cliff Collin's,(another tired commodity), writes in The Bar Bulletin in January, 2009:

"Gaydos, a Eugene lawyer, was a catalyst behind organizing the OSB's Futures Conference, held last September in Bend. Technology was a big focus of that meeting, and he believes one of the OSB's objectives should be to assist its members in preparing for such imminent events as state court electronic filing."

Gimmie a break! The "President's Advisory Committee on Futures Issues" had a report from their "Technology Subcommittee" in 9/20/02 on these identical issues. Mark Comstock, former BOG member, was assigned the task of coordinating state E filing FIVE YEARS ago and reports it is still over a year away! My God, the federal government has had E filing in federal court for about ten years. So, why are we slowly reinventing that wheel?

Teresa Schmid talks of the importance of Long Range Planning. And here is the biggest joke of all. This same Garst 2004 memo mentioned above talks about all the "Long Range Planning Committee's" BOG has had over the years and they all come to nothing.

The Future  --  I have carefully reviewed the agenda for BOG for February, 2009. There are reports. There are updates. There is the same old tired stuff that BOG has been doing for twenty years and longer. What is missing? Breakthrough Changes. There is nothing that BOG did over a day and a half of important lawyer's time that amounts to a hill of beans. Each BOG member should ask themselves at the end of each BOG meeting:  What significant contribution have I made for the good of the order for this last day and a half that I have spent on behalf of the 13,000 lawyers in Oregon, the public and the legal profession while attending this BOG meeting? If the answer is nothing, then we should change the system. And we should. Now.   The answer is either reform or wipe the slate clean and start over. That would be a revolution.  Either is needed.  Otherwise, we are stuck in the ditch while all other professions are moving forward.  The only immutable legislative duty of the Bar is lawyer discipline.  All the rest can be changed. 

And I will have something to say about Oregon lawyer discipline NEXT!