Trial Lawyers Rejoice!

It seems the chickens have finally come home to roost! For years, the insurance and tobacco lobbies were banging the drum loudly about the pretended root cause of their problems. Not bad investments. Not bad policies and procedures. Not their own unethical business practices, bad faith claims adjustment or shareholder treatment. No. They were the babes in the woods, just trying to make a decent living against great odds. Their problems, they proclaimed stridently, rested squarely on the shoulders of the trial lawyers. Trial lawyers who were overzealous, unscrupulous and calloused and trial lawyers who were determined to gut these companies, leaving their remains to the buzzards. If you couldn't find low priced car insurance, or adequate health care in your neighborhood, or fair life insurance rates, it was all the fault of the trial lawyers, they said.

After a while, like all propaganda, the repetition began to sound an echo something like the truth, since the lobbyists shouted the loudest. And the bogus mantra was regurgitated all the way into the White House and down again to state houses for a decade. The collective lobby was the same as the brash, profligate, duelling brawler, who, upon being mortally wounded, speaks ill of his opponent with these dying words: "Let that be a lesson!"

Fortunately, realty can sometimes have a purging effect on falsehood. People finally come to see that they have been duped. They stumble about in a state of shock once their eyes have been opened, amazed at their own foolishness. They now know that great lies have been told, told by those they thought were trustworthy, people who relieved them of their life savings, pension funds, and confidence in the future. These ordinary people turn again to the very group who has helped them all along, loved them, embraced them, and never stopped believing in them: the trial lawyers.

Are law firms themselves currently feeling the pinch of a depressed economy? Sure. Do the typical concerns of running a law practice, such as cash flow, control of overhead, flexible credit, good public relations, winning new clients, quality service and maintaining a stellar reputation still dominate the firm business model. You bet! Will the fallout stemming from today's economic conditions have an effect on billable hours, retirement accounts, charitable contributions and the risk/reward analysis of cases. Of course.

But at least stop for a moment and revel in the fact that it's already been quite some time since anyone has uttered the once counter-productive and now meaningless catch-phrase: "tort reform."