Do Better Lawyers Mean Better Justice?

In response to Joseph A. Bugni’s May 2026 Wisconsin Lawyer article, “Trial Lawyers: Trying a Case with Different Eyes,” Randy S. Parlee, a retired trial lawyer and trial educator, reflects on the purpose of trial advocacy.

I write regarding Joseph Bugni’s article “Trial Lawyers: Trying A Case with Different Eyes.” It raises a disturbing philosophical point.

I am a retired trial lawyer. I tried over 80 civil cases to verdict over 35 years. I teach Advanced Trial Practice at Marquette Law School.

Just how “skilled” do we want a trial lawyer to be? Should a lawyer be so skilled that his or her silver-tongued eloquence persuades a jury to reach a verdict contrary to the facts and applicable law?

Such a notion contradicts the idea of objective justice, that there is an empirically correct verdict for every case based on the facts and law, notwithstanding the skill or lack of it possessed by the trial lawyers.

This point was alluded to in Neil deGrasse Tyson’s television series Cosmos, a follow-up to Carl Sagan’s iconic series of the same name. Tyson is a physicist, not a lawyer. He advocates for empirical truth over advocacy-based reasoning. When the public starts to believe that trial results depend primarily on the skill or reputation of the trial lawyer, confidence in our system of justice erodes.

As a trial educator, it would be absurd for me to contend that a trial lawyer could be “overly skilled.” However, the goal of that skill should be clear and concise communication to the jury of the full range of relevant facts, not verbal and psychological manipulation which persuades a jury to reach a verdict contrary to those facts.

The line between those two goals is sometimes blurry.

Randy S. Parlee, Marquette 1983, Hartford

Reflecting on 53 years of Practice in France

Author, educator, and attorney Ronald P. Sokol, admitted to the Wisconsin bar in 1962, has practiced law in France since 1973. Prompted by Diane Diel’s May 2026 reflection on 50 years in family law, Sokol looks back on his own six-plus decades in the profession — from an Olivetti typewriter to the laptop on his desk today — and traces the remarkable evolution of French divorce law over the same span.

In the May 2026 edition of Wisconsin Lawyer, former State Bar President Diane Diel reflects on changes over her 50 years of practicing family law in Milwaukee, from her admission in 1976 to the present. Reading her account, I thought of the changes I have seen during the same period. I was admitted to the bar in Wisconsin in 1962 and to the bar in France in 1973, where I have practiced for the past 53 years.

By 1973, I had put aside my Olivetti portable typewriter, on which I had typed my book on federal habeas corpus and a few others, and had moved up to an IBM electric typewriter with interchangeable fonts and the wonderful option to erase a mistyped letter.

Two years later, IBM made a technological leap. It introduced the Memocarte, a bulky machine that probably weighed 50 pounds. I inserted small magnetic cards into a slot and typed on the electric keyboard. Each card cost five francs and held 2.5 pages of memory. Once my text was ready, I could save it to the magnetic card, but there was no screen to view the text. There was a six-month wait to get the machine, which cost 78,000 French francs — about $65,000 in today’s money.

In 1981, the Osborne Corporation introduced a portable computer with a 5-inch screen. It weighed over 25 pounds, but if I was feeling strong, I could carry it to a meeting. It cost $1,795. Although the Osborne computer was initially successful, the company was bankrupt by 1985. Unfortunately, I discarded my three Osbornes although they, like the IBM Memocarte, were valuable relics of computer evolution. It took another 15 years before I made a major upgrade in 1997 with Sony’s launch of the Vaio laptop. It weighed just under three pounds. I still own it and keep it alongside my Memocarte and a tiny Fujitsu computer in my informal technology museum.

Divorce first entered French law in 1792, after the Revolution. The only grounds were mutual consent. After Napoleon’s defeat in 1815 and the restoration of the monarchy, France abolished divorce, calling it “a poison from the Revolution.” After 68 years of abolition, divorce was reintroduced into French law in 1884 for gross misconduct. Misconduct meant either adultery or a criminal conviction.

In 1938, a woman’s legal incapacity was abolished, as was her duty to obey her husband. It took another 32 years for the notion of “Head of the Family” to be abolished in 1970, in favor of joint parental authority. Five years later, in 1975, a new law permitted divorce by mutual consent, six years of separation, or gross misconduct.

In 2001, for the first time, French wives were granted legal status as heirs. Because there is no unlimited testamentary freedom in France, this was a major step forward. She can now choose either a life estate in her deceased husband’s entire estate or the right to full ownership of one-fourth of his estate.

In 2004, the law changed again, introducing four grounds for divorce: mutual consent, two years’ separation, permanent alteration, and “accepted divorce.” This last category is used when the parties agree they want to divorce but do not agree on the terms and must proceed to litigation. Once the parties agree to accept the principle of divorce, which they do before the Family Court Judge, their decision is irrevocable.

Finally, ten years later, in 2016, the right to divorce by mutual consent without the need to go to court was introduced. Each party must be represented by its own lawyer. The lawyers draft the terms. The document is then registered with a French notaire, and presto, the parties are divorced. As there is no court judgment and our clients are usually of different nationalities and have assets in more than one country, we advise against this simplified procedure unless we can be certain that the divorce will be recognized in other countries.

My 64 years of practicing law, first in a federal appellate court in the United States and then in France, have also passed quickly. I now have a large, curved monitor on my desk, attached to a lightweight laptop that I detach and take home at night. Instead of the $65,000 I had to pay for my IBM Memocarte, I paid less than 1000€ for my Samsung laptop. I hope to sell the IBM Memocarte as an antique one day and recoup my investment, which I could ill afford at the time. My smartphone and my wife of 57 years are now my closest attachments, although ChatGPT is trying to edge into the relationship.

Ronald P. Sokol, Virginia 1962, Puyricard, Aix-en-Provence, France