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Proud to be a lawyer … hope you are too
Larry Wilks, President

Larry Wilks President

I am proud to be a lawyer. I hope you are too. As a kid I thought there were five foundational professions in civilized society. Lawyers for order, doctors for healing, teachers for learning, farmers for food and “preachers” for the divine.

When my Dad, the farmer, died in 1995 I rose to eulogize him and declared that family farming was the most noble of all professions because of the their selfless desire to feed their own family and many others. Then I had lawyering a close second. With the more recent advance of “corporate” farming I have moved lawyering up a notch to number one.

While I learned later that my original five great professions was a gross oversimplification, it ultimately led me to the law. By a happy necessity my early years required clients from many backgrounds. My first appointed criminal case came via A.A. Birch. Little did I know that someday he would sit on the Tennessee Supreme Court. A lot of good things start in small ways. Therefore, as lawyers we all remember legal maxim #1: Sweat the little things.

As a rural kid we “raised” tobacco and other crops. Tobacco especially required hard manual labor. One spring we “set” our tobacco crop three times before it lived. It eventually became one of our better crops. My Dad simply would not give in to the weather or Mother Nature. I learned legal maxim #2: Great work habits and perseverance maximize your chance for success even in the face of adversity.

In the early ’70s my Uncle Albert bought a few dairy cows to milk. I learned to milk cows every day on top of our other farming activities. I was lucky because I was overpaid for the work, which meant I had extra gas money but moreover I learned legal maxim #3: Be dependable and show up every day.

Two other uncles were long-term military veterans. One was in World War II at the Battle of the Bulge. He never mentioned the war without remembering General Patton and those he led who saved his life. At his knee I learned legal maxim #4: The desire to survive a life-threatening crisis can say a lot about we Americans. Freedom is worth fighting for in war and in the courtroom.

Early in my legal career certain other eternal truths became self evident to me: the court clerk is always right; you can not attribute rational thought to irrational people; staff and overhead get paid first; people who criticize lawyers generally are very proud of their own lawyer; lawyer jokes can be a left-handed compliment (i.e., Shakespeare’s line “First let’s kill all the lawyers” really means that if you want to be a tyrant, eliminate liberty’s last and foremost champion, the lawyers).

Last for this column but certainly not least, is what I call the lawyers “Do Right Rule.” Many years ago, former TBA President Randy Noel and I spent some time discussing the hallowed “Do Right Rule.” The conversation showed up in one of his president’s columns. A few days ago while preparing for oral argument in the 6th Circuit in Cincinnati I played judge with the Hon. Lew Conner in a mock appellant hearing. Judge Conner invoked the “Do Right Rule” while asking a question of counsel and all those old memories came flooding back to me, including former judges and lawyers I had shared time with including Randy. Regardless of whether it’s a civil or criminal case, in a state or federal court, whether it’s a fact or legal question, an evidentiary issue or an ethics matter, the “Do Right Rule” still controls. It makes me proud to be a lawyer to know that the “Do Right Rule” almost always eventually controls the Rule of Law.

When all of us who are alive today have drawn our last breath, let us hope we are still proud to be lawyers. Let us hope that the clients we fight so hard for, the transactions we sweat over, the cases we try, the disputes we settle or prevent, and the policies we declare are still subject to the “Do Right Rule.”

In another context Justice Potter Stewart said “I know it when I see it.” The same can be said for the “Do Right Rule.” I still know it when I see it. I trust you do too.

I am proud to be a lawyer. I hope you are too. See you at the “Do Right Rule” place — the TBA.