Your letter of October 23, 1973 to Mr. Cox was referred to me I came from a poverty environment, worked in a legal aid office, was a deputy DA and a city attorney, and have worked as a sole practitioner for 20 years. I have a strong interest in government and people. You may find my views interesting even if not acceptable by you and your subcommittee. About 160 million people cannot or do not hire attorneys. The majority of attorneys in California earn less than $6,200 a year, excluding attorneys working for government, big corporations and attorneys with multi-generation connections with wealthy property owners. Legislators are not actually attorneys and have no understanding of the practice of the law. Schools promise large salaries to lure students, then flood the streets with unemployable attorneys. Large bar associations are dominated by rich attorneys who live in the same ivory towers as do the law professors. Non In a thousand little ways, the legislative bodies have taken away the income of attorneys so lawyers can no longer afford to handle cases free for those who cannot afford to pay. lawyers in free competition finished the degradation of the legal profession. 다 Senator John V. Tunney October 30, 1973 I teach business law, real estate law and real estate finance to night classes at our local college. Preventive law is unwelcome, uninteresting and unperceived; law itself is a lifetime mystery to most Americans. Lawyer's fixed fees are illegal, and the legal profession has no union to protect itself. The public has no means to protect itself from lawyers. The Johnson administration set up federally-funded offices of imported attorneys and staffs to "help the poor." Instead of handling the real legal problems of the poor, the elaborate local CRLA office (four attorneys plus staff of seven or more) has always sought headlines and excitement by trying to change the law. They have been picketed by the poor. Shocked by denial of legal aid to frustrated, deserving poor, private attorneys tried to get CRLA funds cut off. Governor Reagan encouraged the substitution of a Judicare type program hoping to finance it with private capital. Despite the Governor's veto, the bureaucracy justified CRLA's existence insisting CRLA was helping the poor. They didn't. They still don't. They won't solve the common, messy problems of the poor. They still1 won't handle marriage dissolutions and bankruptcies, two areas where an attorney can solve a certain kind of problem very common to the poor. My conclusion is that Congress should stop subsidizing attorneys. If you won't do that, you should specify what kinds of legal problems will be solved free and let people have their attorney fees fixed by statute and paid for by the government while letting the client select his own attorney along the concept of Judicare. Very truly yours, Thomas & Lang Thomas A. Lang, President TAL/d CC: James E. Dixon, Executive Committee 24-626 - 74 - 58 I wish to acknowledge receipt of your letter of October 23, 1973 with the enclosure of your opening remarks of September 19, 1973 at your Subcommittee meeting on Representation of Citizen Interests. I am certain that you are aware that Sonoma County is a mixed community, namely, agricultural and urban. Sonoma County Bar Association has initiated here, in this area of relatively rapid growth, a legal aid society and lawyers' reference service which is presently functioning and contributing to society in answer to many of the problems that you have raised in your opening remarks referenced above. While we do not claim to have solved all the problems which your committee is studying, we do feel we have taken major steps in the last few years to correct some obvious deficiencies which have existed in the past. It is true, there is an area of society which the California Rural Legal Assistance was not interested in supporting or did not have sufficient funds to support for legal services, and we hope we have breached that gap by providing a viable legal aid service here in Sonoma County. I do know that for approximately three months when the OEO funds for CRLA were cut off in Sonoma County, that we were able to take over their cases by referral and handle them in an expeditious manner. Not knowing exactly what your committee would like to know about our problems here in Sonoma County, I can merely state that we have recognized the need and are attempting to satisfy that need within the community. This program is being financed by the Sonoma County Bar Association with the only assistance from the United Way, Lawyers' Wives of Sonoma County and staffing and offices provided by Lawyers' Reference Service of Sonoma County. Records and Statistics could be made available upon request for their activities this past year. Honorable John V. Tunney November 6, 1973 The practicing attorney in Sonoma County is not a "corporate attorney" but rather more in the category of a small-town attorney with most firms ranging in size from sole practitioners to the largest with approximately 12 or 13 attorneys. I would guess that all of these firms do pro bono publico work, whether intentional or not, as is the experience of many practicing attorneys. I am sorry that a more definitive presentation could not be made in reply to your letter of the 23rd. However, we have not had an opportunity to have our meeting of our Bar Association since receipt of it and the response is due by November 6. I trust that some of our comments may be of assistance. Very truly yours, SONOMA COUNTY BAR ASSOCIATION RWM/bg Robert W. Mackey, President BOARD OF GOVERNORS JACK C. FELTHOUSE GERALD WINERMAN SHIRLEY A. SCHUSTER PHILIP L. O'LENO RUSSELL K. KANE ARTHUR J. RUBENSTEEN STANLEY O. EPSTEIN JACK J. MILLER. EX-OFFICIO PAST PRESIDENTS LEE MATHEWS MALCOLM E. STEWART HOWARD C. VELPMAN MARY G. CREUTZ LAUREN M. HANDLEY VINCENT PETTIT JACK W. TUCKER INEZ INGRAM HOWARD G. FJELLSTROM JACK J. MILLER The Hon. John V. Tunney United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Representation of Citizen Interests, Washington, D. C. 20510 Dear Senator Tunney: Your letter addressed to Ms. Shirley A. I read your opening remarks of September 19, 1973 and while I admit many of the things you said are true I must confess that I totally disagree with you in some of your other statements. I am one of the 38% of attorneys who is a sole practitioner representing primarily middle class clients. I believe that attorneys who have similar practices to mine have expertise in dealing with persons who are either totally without funds to hire an attorney or who have limited funds for that purpose. To my knowledge we are never called to testify before any committee or subcommittee to give our opinions relative to the issues mentioned in your opening remarks. An obvious example of this situation is that in California minimum fee schedules were established as a guide so that attorneys could show |