Bringing It All Together

By John M. Poswall

We were the class of '69 - the last class of the tumultuous '60s. At Boalt Hall. UC Berkeley. What a time.

When our class arrived in the fall of 1966, President Johnson had 385,000 troops in Vietnam (Hey, hey, LBJ! How many kids did you kill today?). Huey Newton and the Black Panthers patrolled the streets of Oakland. Cesar Chavez was organizing farmworkers in the fields of California. Ronald Reagan was about to be elected governor. Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. were still alive.

But we law students were "upcampus," away from the hordes - somehow above it all - expected to apply reason, to apply the law. In time, we found we had to change the law, even change Boalt. We demanded "relevance." Yes, some of us on the law review wrote of Black Power, while others wrote about the Rule Against Perpetuities. But we all learned the historic basis of contracts, torts, constitutional law, criminal law - and even corporations. We learned to analyze, to take apart an argument, to extend a precedent, and, as Professor Kingsfield said in that famous movie The Paper Chase, to "think like a lawyer." Boalt did not give us our idealism, but it gave us the tools to make it effective in our lives.

Of course, almost all of us were men. Of the approximate 275 graduating students, I recall few women. But perhaps portending things to come, a woman was ranked number one in our class.

By the time we graduated, recruiting law firms were responding to the idealism of the '60s by offering time off, after accruing enough billable hours, to do good works (perhaps a "summer in Selma" as a volunteer attorney). I deferred and returned home to Sacramento. After a year at a private firm, where I had expressed an interest in doing the occasional civil liberties case, I was told we were "not that kind of firm." When I left to pursue something beyond conventional civil law practice, I was told I obviously couldn't be persuaded by money to stay because I "wanted to live in a tent." The implication was clear: I had to choose between a lucrative career and the public interest. So I joined a firm known primarily for its pro bono civil liberties work for the ACLU.

Since then, I have used my legal education to help those opposed to our national policy - starting with the Vietnam War; close a nuclear power plant; enjoin insurance companies from refusing to provide treatment to women with breast cancer; protect the rights of high school and college students to organize and of faculty to speak; and confront institutions passing over women for jobs traditionally reserved for men.

Often, such cases would generate significant publicity: A Wall Street Journal editorial railed against my successful federal lawsuit to free a West Point graduate, a conscientious objector, from service in Vietnam, and later I appeared on ABC's 20/20 defending the free speech rights of a lesbian professor at a state college. Frequently in these high-profile suits my clients and I would organize pickets reminiscent of the demonstrations of the '60s. In the words of the radical lawyer character in my novel The Lawyers: Class of '69: "If you want to be a lawyer, confine yourself to the courtroom. If you want to be a movement lawyer, take your case to the streets."

But the case of Leonardini v. Shell Oil Company brought it all together. Shell tried to silence, with a lawsuit, a critic of one of its products used to make water pipes. When the company's case was dismissed, we countersued for malicious prosecution and confronted the company with, of all things, violating the First Amendment. The jury verdict, upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, resulted in Shell paying $7.5 million, most of it in punitive damages. The choice between lucrative private practice and practice in the public interest, was - and is - a false choice. Public interest litigation pays - and it also feels good.

Today, I still say "Boalt Hall" with pride, and I look back on those years with nostalgia. I encourage young people who really want to do something with their lives to consider going to law school. It is not just about trials. A legal education is about the ability to analyze and articulate - to pursue reason whether in a courtroom, a legislative hearing, or wherever it takes you.

And, by the way, I don't live in a tent. I live in what some have called a castle, on 50 acres of ponds and gardens. Not bad for a public-interest lawyer.

John M. Poswall is a Sacramento-based trial lawyer and the author of two novels: The Altar Boys (Jullundar Press, 2008) and The Lawyers: Class of '69 (Jullundar Press, 2003).

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