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Home Page Official Publication of the State Bar of California August2003
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Inexperience shows

Joe Rution of Santa Barbara recently handled a "minor personal litigation" and, with that vast experience and an otherwise unused law school degree circa 1963, takes it upon himself to tell the practicing bar how we should practice our profession. His letter has all the markings of the arrogance that a successful life in business sometimes produces, but Mr. Rution, you know nothing about the practice of law. Perhaps it took you 20 pieces of paper to reschedule a case management conference because you had no idea what you were doing.

David L. Fiol
Tiburon

Sharing the pain

Congratulations to Joe Rution for his letter "Return to ‘ritual' a pain in the bum." I pretty much agree.

Without listing a plethora of examples of the waste which leads to, among other things, more billable hours, one example comes to mind: While squabbling over a motion to compel production of documents (can't believe I used to do stuff like that for a living) the heated opposing counsel told me "F—- you!" I then sent him a letter to confirm his choice of words.

Now here's the punch line: This was one of the more exciting mo-ments from my former practice of law.

Kevin Chess
Tucson, Ariz.

Cheap tactics

I didn't like the subject or the tone of your article (10 years after 101 California St., July). In view of the legislation coming up before Congress on the gun ban renewal, I feel your article was just another appeal to the emotions to invoke anti-gun sentiment.

Lawrence Lewis
San Diego

Only angels need apply

Catching up on back issues of the Journal (Boy Scout issue, July), I feel that California should be satisfied with nothing less than judges who have constitutionally-compliant haloes over their heads.

Norman Cohen
Redlands

Not the first

I enjoyed reading Jim Herman's column (July). May I request one small correction? I was not the first chair of the Board of Legal Specialization. Rather, I was chair when the pilot program in legal specialization was approved by the California Supreme Court as a permanent program. Along with Ken Larson and Peter Keane, I had the privilege of representing the State Bar before the Supreme Court in this matter.

But for the efforts of brilliant and kind lawyers such as Eugene Marias, Vic Beauzay, Barry Satzman, Merv Glow and Lowell Airola, workers' compensation law would not have been a specialty field from the inception. We who practice in this area of law now only go on their shoulders.

Yale Jones
San Francisco

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