Panorama of Defects

The men who milled through the San Francisco Hilton lobby last week seemed prototypical affluent Americans. Lawyers in town for the American Bar Association's annual meeting --some 8,000 strong--they conventioneered in determinedly conventional fashion. Black ties came out for a dinner dance complete with Bob Hope ("This would be a great place to get whiplash"). Outthrust hands took advantage of the boundless cordiality of Lewis Powell, former A.B.A. president, and clients might later be told, "I was chatting last summer with Justice Powell.. ."

All in all, it might have been a blissful, tax-deductible working vacation --if only so many of the speakers had not kept repeating that the legal profession is in a bit of a jam. Washington Attorney Charles Rhyne, also a former A.B.A. president, pronounced the meeting "a panorama of the defects and deficiencies in American justice."

Chief Justice Warren Burger opened the panorama with his now-annual "state of the judiciary" address and drew grunts of amazement as he reeled off figures on the "explosion of litigation" that is engulfing U.S. courts. In the Supreme Court, he reported, the same total of nine men who considered 2,400 cases in 1962 confronted more than 4,500 last year. Burger proposed, among other things, that all new laws opening new avenues of litigation carry a "court-impact statement," which would assess the increased judicial efforts required by the new legislation.

After that, lawyers trundling from session to session heard a dismal litany of problems ranging from continuing prejudice against women and blacks to the new right of indigents to get free counsel for misdemeanor charges. The most widespread gloom at the meeting came from the constantly discussed threat of no-fault automobile-liability insurance (and the end of the billion-dollar collision litigation business). The A.B.A.'s House of Delegates staunchly reiterated its opposition to the basic idea but hopefully proposed a compromise: mandatory automobile liability insurance, which would pay up to $2,000 to each individual covered, regardless of fault. It claimed this "would cover the total economic losses sustained by nearly 95% of traffic accident victims."

The likely loss of income to lawyers that no-fault insurance would cause, combined with competition from newly graduated lawyers (30,000 annually by 1974), gave added impetus to an idea that was thought heretical a few years ago: Blue Cross-style insurance plans covering the average citizen's legal costs, from a home purchase to a divorce. "The public interest, as well as the lawyer's pocketbook, is at stake," said new A.B.A. President Robert Meserve. "To put the matter bluntly, we need the business and the clients."

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