California Bar Journal
OFFICIAL PUBLICATION OF THE STATE BAR OF CALIFORNIA - SEPTEMBER 2000
spacer.gif (810 bytes)

OPINION

spacer.gif (810 bytes)
The whole truth will provide...
spacer.gif (810 bytes)
Behind the scenes with a spin doctor...
spacer.gif (810 bytes)

EDITOR’S NOTE: Last month, State Bar President Andy Guilford wrote about “The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth” in the “From the President” column (August, page 8). The response was overwhelming; a small part of it is reflected here.

. . . a certain power

Thank you for standing up for what’s right. I believe that seeking the truth is not only a morally superior way to practice law, but practically superior as well. There is a power that accompanies one who pursues the truth that those imitating it don’t get.

I know that many of our colleagues and non-lawyers don’t believe this, but I would leave the profession the minute I couldn’t. Thanks again for saying it so clearly.

Bill Chapman
Rancho Santa Margarita

. . . unassailable credibility

Each time I administer, or have the court clerk administer, the oath in court, I think maybe I should add a little commentary about how we really mean it in this legal forum. It takes people like you at the top to keep this issue warm.

Each of the examples you gave in your opinion was real and probably very close to each of us. We can’t have the “little white lies” govern our conduct.

And it is very hard to separate our personal conduct and our legal conduct. We must use the same standards of truth in each of them or both our professional and our personal lives lose credibility.

Bravo Zulu (Navy expression for well done).

Tom Burr, Superior Court Commissoner
Merced County

. . . good for the profession

Bravo! I am glad you spoke out on the issue of truth. We lawyers need to be continually reminded of this issue. It is so easy to rationalize away the commitment to truth.

Keep on speaking out. You’re doing the profession (and society) a favor.

Terry Bork, Deputy District Attorney
Los Angeles

... a standard to attain

I’ve never before written to anyone regarding what I have read, but your opinion piece is an exception. It should be mandatory reading and memorization for every California lawyer, and particularly for all prosecutors.

I would hope that all of us could honestly (there’s that “truth” again) look at ourselves in the mirror each morning and say that the observations in the article do not apply to us and that we measure up to the standards that the article suggests.

I am grateful and pleased to have read your words, even more so considering your position as president of the State Bar and the placement of the words in the California Bar Journal.

Thank you for taking the time to express them. I will remember them; they now have a distinct and honored place on my office wall.

Larry F. Roberts, Deputy District Attorney
San Bernardino County

. . . the ultimate spin

Thanks for writing something meaningful in the president’s column. The biggest problem is that people, especially lawyers, have convinced themselves that their spin is the truth, and they no longer see their role as an officer of the court or that they owe any particular standard of honesty to the court and the system.

They confuse their role as challengers of other people’s assertions (burden of truth) with their own assertion of the spun truth. Maybe money has something to do with it.

Keep up the good work.

Ernest Burger
Los Angeles

. . . a better role model

This is a topic of great interest to me as a mother (of four teen/young adult boys) who has made that the bottom line of honor for my children, and as a lawyer (for 23 years, first as a prosecutor and business litigator, now as trial attorney) who considers it the bottom line of my practice.

I often feel like I am whistling in the wind as I take more and more depositions of late where it is apparent that the witness has not told the truth and gets caught . . . with little consequence. What’s the big deal about a little contempt citation and a few dollars in sanctions, anyway?

Your article was excellent, but it seems to me you left out a very important reason that truthfulness is not in vogue of late in our culture. When the president of the United States (also a licensed attorney) takes an oath to uphold the laws of our country and an oath to tell the truth to a grand jury and obviously does not, getting a free pass on perjury charges, then why should an ordinary citizen obey the law? When his actions are dismissed as inconsequential, we are lost.

Kim A. Seefeld
Santa Barbara

. . . a chance of a comeback

I share your beliefs with telling the truth. I have always conducted my life that way — with a view toward telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Unfortunately, not many other people do, from the lawyers in the O.J. Simpson case all the way up to the president of the United States. All optimism aside, with public role models like that, what chance for a comeback does the truth really have?

John Goold
Modesto

. . . a new view of life

Your article alludes to the problem: what happens in one’s profession springs from one’s private life. The problem is not that we as lawyers have a less complete view of the truth; we as a culture have deemed the truth to be relative. A naturalist world view (the dominant view in our society) rebuffs any notion of absolutes.

You nobly call for a “commitment to telling the truth.” However, unless our view of life, and thus our view of the truth, changes, that commitment is placed in a version of the truth that created the problem.

This is a tide to be turned rather than a personal commitment. Surely, it starts with individuals. Husbands and wives must commit to an abso-lute version of the truth. They must then pass that commitment to their children. Our schools, in assisting parents in the education of their children, must emphasize the virtue of telling the truth in its absolute form.

This still leaves one important question unaswered: What will cause an individual to view life differently and thus commit to the absolute truth?

Bill Trask
Lemon Grove