A map without cities

Our board of governors has voted to spend our money to create a “Find a Lawyer” searchable database with names, schools, telephone numbers and even pictures of lawyers, but with no mention of their areas of practice (June). Brilliant, positively brilliant. That’s as useful as a database of restaurants with descriptions of their china and silverware and pictures of their stoves, but without mention of the kind of food they serve.

Neil L. Shapiro
Monterey

Easy to find a lawyer

There was much consternation over the compromise the State Bar’s board reached over the “Find a Lawyer” web-based search tool. But there is already something equivalent to a practice area search feature available on the bar’s Web site, members.calbar.ca.gov/search/ls_search.aspx.

Just integrate this existing feature into the “Find a Lawyer” site. Problem solved. This solution would also drive more lawyers to seek certification, which is a good thing. Leave it to a bunch of lawyers to make something far more complicated and contentious than it need be.

Matthew Wayman
Career Counselor,
Santa Clara University School of Law

Looking beyond the LSAT

I applaud the efforts of UC Berkeley researchers Marjorie Shultz and Sheldon Zedeck and their efforts at expanding criteria for law school admission beyond grades and the LSAT (June). All the LSAT and grades can show is how well you take tests, not how well-suited you are to be a lawyer. The worst instructor I had in law school was a Yale Law Review grad who was definitely not meant to teach and I seriously doubt practice law.

On the other side of the coin, I think we should require recent successful takers of the bar exam to do a six-month internship before they can hang out their shingle and practice as lawyers. And law schools should seriously think of adding a required course on the business of being a lawyer.

Allen P. Wilkinson
Whittier

Will anyone listen?

I must say I have never been so whole-heartedly in agreement with the opinions and suggestions offered by anyone as those by Edwin B. Stegman (June). His obvious no-nonsense views and common sense proposals for resolving the defects he identified in our system are refreshing.

Sadly, it is unlikely that any of his suggestions will be implemented (at least during our lifetimes) because even cost-saving measures cost money to implement. Court filing fees are unconscionable in most instances, but if not the litigants, from whose pockets should the money come?

Kim Hickman
Fair Oaks

Another look at an old idea

Although all Mr. Stegman’s recommendations merit strong consideration, one of them in particular commanded my attention, namely his recommendation that two Supreme Courts, one civil and one criminal, be established. The late California Supreme Court Justice Stanley Mosk suggested that very state constitutional amendment to me while I was a member of the state Senate.

I introduced such a measure in the early 1990s. Unfortunately, the bill was rejected by the Senate Judiciary Committee and never received a vote in the full Senate, much less the Assembly. The time for determination of appeals of capital punishment cases would surely be shortened with a separate Supreme Court for criminal cases only.

Quentin L. Kopp
Judge, San Mateo Superior Court (retired)

Unfair bias

I question the propriety of the State Bar to prosecute Philip Kay and John Dalton and at the same time publish such a biased, inflammatory pre-trial article (May). Even the sub-title, “Bad behavior draws 21 charges,” is an opinion. Only after Kay and Dalton have exhausted their appeals — assuming the bar can first prove its allegations — can anyone “conclude” anything, except they are presumed to be ethical advocates.

Perhaps Kay’s criticisms of the State Bar as a “Star Chamber” have some merit. Did the original “Star Chamber” have its own publication, sent to all members of the mandatory, integrated bar, with its sentence, then verdict, and finally charges in succeeding editions?

R. Clayton Huntsman
St. George, Utah