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A Letter on Civility
Dear Nashville Bar,
Thank you. Thank you so very much for your kindness and grace. I have been blessed and impressed with your collegiality and your civility.
And that matters.
From my earliest days as a baby lawyer, I realized that I loved being in the courtroom. I loved the exhilaration of cross-examining adverse witnesses or arguing legal points to a skeptical judge. For the past nine years as an appellate litigator, I have loved every moment standing at the podium in front of a panel of esteemed jurists to do battle with some of the brightest attorneys in Tennessee.
But that is not why I love being in the courtroom. The real reason that I love to be in court is that I love being around my fellow attorneys in that setting. It is the camaraderie of the bar, the respect and the banter, the kindness and goodness of my fellow attorneys (and our judges) that makes the courtroom feel like home to me. And when is the last time you heard someone mention the “goodness” of attorneys? But it is true—our bar is blessed with exceptional people of character.
Opposing counsel have made me laugh out loud in the courtroom, and they have shown me respect outside of it, even when it was not deserved. I have had opposing counsel concede issues after investigation, and I have had opposing counsel forgive me for missteps and misstatements. And I have witnessed counsel make significant personal sacrifices for their clients or to assist the court.
I suspect most of us who have grown up litigating in Nashville have had many such experiences. I wish all of us could experience such congeniality with our professional colleagues. Unfortunately, the experience is not universal. For example, I have a brother who practiced for a time in the California courts. I thought he would be a natural in court, but he quickly learned to despise the courtroom—mostly because of his experiences with his fellow attorneys. Many were mean or callous, and some were dishonest. There was no joy in working with lawyers like that.
I am sure many of you, like me, have friends or classmates who practice in other jurisdictions. And I am sure you, like me, have heard of their experiences trying to work with the obstreperous attorneys in their bar. In fairness, there are times when I have been frustrated with the conduct of some of my fellow Nashville attorneys. But I can also say that, with extremely few exceptions, we were able to work through the frustrations and, at the end of the day, we could still look at each other with mutual respect.
I used to believe that other jurisdictions lacked civility due to the size of their bar. How could lawyers learn to appreciate each other if they did not know each other and interact with each other? But now I find myself praying that size alone will not destroy the civility and camaraderie of the local bar. If so, Nashville is doomed. Its legal community is growing fast.
I am not alone in my concern about the continued vitality of Nashville’s remarkable legal culture. Just last month, Tennessee Supreme Court Justice Sarah Campbell presented a Law Day address to the Nashville Bar about the need for civility and how to maintain it. (Her remarks can be found in this issue at Page 7.)
Other jurisdictions sensing a decline in the civility of the bar have adopted proactive measures. For example, the Utah bar adopted a “Lawyer’s Oath” that every lawyer must take “upon licensure.”1 That oath reads as follows:
Id. (emphasis added). I love the reminder that an officer of the court has a duty to act with honesty, fidelity, professionalism, and civility.
Those same ideals are included in Tennessee’s own Rules of Professional Conduct.2 (“These principles include the lawyer’s obligation zealously to protect and pursue a client’s legitimate interests, within the bounds of the law, while maintaining a professional, courteous, and civil attitude toward all persons involved in the legal system.”). But there is nothing so direct as Utah’s Lawyer’s Oath. Nor are new Tennessee attorneys required to recite such an oath upon admission to practice.
I do not know if such a Lawyer’s Oath is required to maintain the core civility that has, for me, defined the character of legal practice in Nashville. But I do know that my career has been the better for the presence of such civility. And I pray that Nashville will find a way to maintain this aspect of its character even as the legal market continues to expand.
This article represents the opinions of the author and not necessarily those of the Office of the Tennessee Attorney General and Reporter.
JONATHAN WARDLE is an Assistant Attorney General in the Criminal Appeals Division of the Office of the Tennessee Attorney General, serves on the NBJ Editorial Committee and is a Fellow of the Nashville Bar Foundation.
Endnotes
1 Utah Sup. Ct. R., ch. 13, Preamble, ¶ 1.
2 See, e.g., Tenn. Sup. Ct. R. 8, Preamble, ¶ 10
