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Vol. 71, No. 11, November 1998
Book Reviews
This Month's Featured Selections
 Big Trouble: A Murder
in a Small Midwestern Town
By J. Anthony Lukas
(New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 1997).
$13.60. 875 pgs.
Reviewed by Julia Belt
Big Trouble: A Murder in a Small Western Town Sets Off a Struggle
for the Soul of America is the story of a murder and a trial in the
American West in the early 1900s. After an itinerant miner confessed to
murdering a former governor of Idaho, three officers of the Western Federation
of Miners were kidnapped in Denver and taken to Idaho for trial on conspiracy
charges. Officials and mine owners in Colorado believed that normal legal
processes could not deal with union malefactors. They exported their problem
to Idaho and helped finance the trial, in essence saying (according to Lukas),
"Here are the bodies, here is the money, please kill them for us."
Clarence Darrow led the defense; William Borah, newly elected U.S. Senator,
lead the prosecution. During voir dire counsel used reports prepared by
"scouts" who had gone into the surrounding county posing as salesmen
to elicit pro or anti-union sympathies from prospective jurors. For closing
arguments, both sides warmed up with an initial 19 hours. Then the stars,
Darrow and Borah, summed up for another 20 hours.
Beyond the violent conflict between the western miners' union and mine owners and
government, Big Trouble depicts characters ranging from President
William McKinley to actress Ethel Barrymore; from baseball star Walter Johnson
to the founder of the Pinkerton Detective Agency. The digressions from the
events of the murder and trial are fascinating accounts of turn-of-the-century
America. We see why national private detective agencies developed, or learn
the history of African-American troops in the U.S. Army. Occasionally the
digressions are irritating either too much detail on a minor point, or
the author breaks away from the trial action too often. Big Trouble
is a useful and entertaining resource to understand the tapestry of American
society at this century's beginning.
Julia Belt, Western New England 1977, LTC, U.S.
Army (Ret.), is a lecturer at the U.W. Law School.
 Lawyers,
Money, and Success:
The Consequences of Dollar Obsession
By Macklin Fleming
(Westport, CT: Quorum Books, 1998).
$55. 168 pgs.
Reviewed by Joseph C. Mrazek
This slim volume is packed with ideas and information. Fleming correctly
diagnoses many of the American legal industry's woes as well as those of
its dissatisfied practitioners, especially at large law firms. He begins
by sketching the rise of such firms as Covington & Burling since the
late 1800s as cost-effective counsel for large corporations.
The book's focus, however, is on the moral decline of the large law firm
in more recent times. Fleming cites the fraud, overbilling, and other scandals
of the 1980s and 90s as symptoms of a general sickness among blue-chip lawyers.
He supports his sometimes controversial contentions with convincing authorities,
statistics, and anecdotes.
Fleming links, among other things, the typical modern large-firm lawyer's
obsession with high income and ornate offices to the increasing public distrust
of lawyers. He also explains how the phenomenal growth of large firms (Jones
Day in Cleveland, for example, expanded from just 26 attorneys in 1937 to
more than 1,100 in 1995) has forced small firms, sole practitioners, and
government lawyers into a less prestigious and poorer "southern hemisphere"
of legal services.
Yet the author's prescriptions for remedying big-firm malaise are less
convincing. Although taking steps to increase productivity and allowing
associates to become well-rounded trial attorneys surely may help some large
firms survive, such measures do not constitute a panacea. To his credit,
Fleming remains an idealist at age 86. His occasional naivete may be forgiven
because he genuinely wants to restore the legal profession to a more respectable
status.
A former justice of the California Court of Appeals, Fleming has 55 years of experience
in private and public practice. He brings wisdom, erudition, and a gift
for clear, engaging writing to the subject. He effectively makes points
by using apt analogies, mostly drawn from history: "The legal war machine
goes into action before any objective is selected or campaign mapped, much
as masses of infantry were deployed in World War I." (p. 109)
Nevertheless, Lawyers, Money and Success offers a disappointingly
tidy and unduly optimistic conclusion, rife with dubious assumptions:
"Once the large law firm gets its house in order by adjusting its
operations to today's competitive markets, by creating working conditions
for its lawyers that reconcile collaborative efforts with professional recognition
and collegiality, and by putting the importance of money into proper perspective,
the bulk of the legal profession will follow suit. Those elements of the
profession that do not will risk extinction." (p. 138)
Fleming fails to note certain significant developments in legal practice
such as the recent explosion of interest among new lawyers in public interest
law that already are eroding the primacy of the large firm.
Even so, he offers us the kind of book rarely written by lawyers anymore:
one that is rich in insights as well as a pleasure to read.
Joseph C. Mrazek, Georgetown 1997, is an assistant
public defender in Racine.
 Cardozo
By Andrew L. Kaufman
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998).
$55. 578 pgs.
Reviewed by Jack Stark
Benjamin Cardozo - because of his stature as a human being and as a judge
and because of his substantial importance in American legal history - certainly
deserves a biography. After roughly 30 years of intermittent work on that
project, Andrew Kaufman has published Cardozo, a book that measures
up to its lofty subject.
Cardozo's fame derives from The Nature of the Judicial Process,
his intellectual prowess, his prose style, a number of landmark opinions
(such as Palsgraf) and his exemplification of legal realism and progressivism.
Kaufman meticulously illustrates and explains the first four of those reasons
for Cardozo's fame. His most impressive achievement in this book, however,
is his finely nuanced explanation of the fifth reason; of the degree to
which, and the kinds of occasions upon which, Cardozo used public policy
considerations to help him decide a case and of the methods that he used
when he did so. Kaufman demonstrates that Cardozo did not indiscriminately
and frequently let his notions of correct public policy influence his decisions,
but that in certain limited circumstances he minimally advanced the law
along the lines that he perceived American society to be developing.
The most difficult task that confronts a biographer whose subject did
intellectual work and left a body of texts is to relate that subject's life
to his or her work. Such a biographer needs to avoid the extremes of assuming
that the life and the work are separate and of assuming that the life totally
determines the work. Kaufman discretely relates the major facets of Cardozo's
life; such as his Judaism, the disgrace of his father (a trial court judge),
his family relations, and his sense of his own and his ancestors' worth;
to Cardozo's work as a judge. In the process he shows that Cardozo was less
than a saint and less than a perfect judge but close to being both.
The only way in which this book disappointed me is that Kaufman did not apply
his considerable skill and discretion and his tireless research in order
to explain more of the relations between, on the one hand, Cardozo's voracious
reading and, on the other hand, his legal opinions and his conceptions of
the law and of a judge's proper role.
Every Wisconsin judge would likely be interested by, and certainly would
profit from reading, Kaufman's Cardozo. Many lawyers also would find
it worthwhile. Because Kaufman explains technical legal terms and writes
clearly and gracefully, many nonlawyers also would enjoy this book. Of it
Cardozo himself might have written, "into a stunning mosaic that accurately
reveals the face of a man has Andrew Kaufman converted thousands of carefully
chosen and carefully shaped tesserae."
Jack Stark, U.W. 1979, is retired. His more recent
books are The Art of the Statute (Fred B. Rothman and Co., 1996),
The Wisconsin State Constitution: A Reference Guide (Greenwood Press,
1997), and The Iowa State Constitution: A Reference Guide (Greenwood
Press, 1998).
 Running a Law Practice on a Shoestring
By Theda C. Snyder
(Chicago, IL: ABA Law Practice Management Section, 1998).
$39.95. 176 pgs.
Reviewed by Andrew S. Gollin
The biggest problem for most practicing attorneys is that they are not
familiar with how to run a business. For most middle-to-large size firms,
this problem often is solved by hiring an office manager. However, small
firms and solo practitioners must rely upon their own wits and experience,
and this book is designed to help them.
Theda C. Synder covers a range of topics such as: allocating your time, managing
your money, locating office space, buying versus leasing office equipment,
learning about the Internet, hiring employees, and much more. She outlines
easy-to-understand methods that can be implemented to save both time and
money. The book includes phone numbers and email addresses for businesses
and agencies that provide free or inexpensive services. For example, the
book discusses situations in which you can save money by informing the merchant
that you are a member of the state or national bar association. I personally
found the chapter on how to minimize your travel expenses to be insightful.
The book would be most useful for recent law school graduates that need
a crash course in how to start and run a successful business. It also may
be useful for more established attorneys who simply want to find ways to
cut costs. And while the book probably is intended for smaller firms or
solo practitioners, it includes several tips that even the larger firms
could use.
Andrew S. Gollin, Marquette 1998 magna cum laude,
is a law clerk for Presiding Judge Charles P. Dykman, Wisconsin Court of
Appeals, District IV.
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