Introduction The world has turned many times since I took the oath to become a lawyer in 1959. That year, the minimum wage was $1, gasoline cost $.25 gallon, and a loaf of bread was $.20. My law school graduation was in a movie theater in downtown Spokane. All of us graduating had attended night law school at Gonzaga from 7:00 pm to 10:00 pm Monday through Friday for the past four years. Most of us had jobs during the…
I began practicing law sixty-five years ago in Mount Vernon, Washington, with a population of 7,900 people. There were 3400 lawyers in the entire state. Today Washington has over 40,000 attorneys. In 1959 the Washington State Bar Association had one executive in charge, Alice O’Leary Ralls. The practice of law was considerably simpler and less complicated than it is today. There was no lawyer advertising and the lawyer -client relationship was not the same as it commonly is today. However,…
. . . One September morning in 1959 Skagit County’s only two superior court judges, Charles Stafford and Arthur Ward, administered my taking the oath to become a brand new lawyer. Also taking the oath was David Welts. There weren’t more than thirty-five lawyers in the county and less than 3,000 in the whole state. The practice of law wasn’t very complicated at that time. The state statutes fit in two binders compared with the volumes of law today….