HCBA Lawyer Magazine Vol. 28, No. 4 | Page 5

E D I T O R ’ S
M E S S A G E
E d C o m e y - L a w C l e r k t o U. S . B a n k r u p t c y Ju d g e M i c h a e l G. Wi l l i a m s o n
i’m an hCba lawyer!
reading about all the good work my fellow hCba members are doing
makes me proud to be a member of the hCba.
A
s you know, Twitter can be a terrible
place to waste your time. If you’re
looking for intelligent, reasoned
discussion of important issues, Twitter
probably shouldn’t be your first
choice. Of course, I’m usually
on Twitter procrastinating
from doing the things I should be
doing. So it works out fine
for me. Occasionally, though,
I stumble across something
thought provoking.
The other day, I saw a tweet
by a black female lawyer. The
lawyer told how she got on an
elevator with two men and two
young black girls. One of the
men asked her what she did for a
living. The woman responded she
was a lawyer, and one of the girls
exclaimed, with a huge smile on
her face, “She’s a lawyer!” The
woman said she was never more
proud to be a lawyer.
Surely I’m not alone when I say I dread when people
ask me what I do for a living. I’ll confess that my first
thought is to lie, because one of two things invariably
happens when I tell people I’m a lawyer.
One, I’m forced to pretend to be amused as the person
runs through his routine for “Last Comic Standing: Lawyer
Joke Edition.” “Oh, I say,” feigning amusement, “I hadn’t
heard that before, but it’s really clever.” Two, I get quizzed
about some arcane legal issue — always in a practice area
I know nothing about — based on a fact pattern that would
be too implausible for a law school exam.
Sometimes, there’s a third option: The person just
complains to me about lawyers. I can’t think of a time
I walked away thinking, “I’m proud I’m a lawyer.”
Why is that? Oh, sure, our profession has its share of
bad apples. So does every other profession. Yet, lawyers
often find themselves at the bottom of public opinion
polls. The typical reaction isn’t, “He’s a lawyer!” I suppose
that has a lot to do with the fact that most people don’t
know all that lawyers do.
That’s one reason I’m thankful
for the Lawyer magazine. This
year, HCBA President Gordon
Hill has made a point of
highlighting lawyers who have
“paid their rent to society.”
In this issue, he highlights three
HCBA members and one of
our voluntary bar associations:
Stephen Todd, Jo Ann Palchak,
Scott McLaren, and the George
Edgecomb Bar Association.
You should really read
Gordon’s article to see how
much Stephen, Jo Ann, Scott,
and GEBA are doing for our
community. Between the two
of them, Stephen and Jo Ann
have done more than 7,500 hours of pro bono work!
And GEBA members have done another 2,000! But it’s
not just Gordon’s article.
Laura Tanner wrote an article for the YLD
highlighting how this past fall, HCBA lawyers volunteered
nearly 150 hours reading to more than 120 kids, and
donated more than 850 books. And the Military &
Veterans Affairs Committee has an article about how Bay
Area Legal Services has partnered with the Bay Pines VA
hospital to address the unmet legal needs of our veterans.
Reading about all the good work my fellow HCBA
members are doing makes me proud to be a member of
the HCBA. From now on, when people ask me what I do,
I think I’ll proudly say, “I’m an HCBA lawyer!”
© Can Stock Photo / spline
MAR - APR 2018
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HCBA LAWYER
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