Law Office Management
Dec. 2, 2008
The Wag-Man
A Schiff Hardin attorney may be the country's only big-firm partner who makes a living practicing animal law.
It may sound insulting to tell Bruce Wagman, a partner at Schiff Hardin in San Francisco, that his client is a monkey's uncle. But it may nearly be true. Earlier this year Wagman--perhaps the country's only big-firm partner practicing animal law almost exclusively--rescued two chimpanzees and nine gibbons from a Texas sanctuary that was under investigation for abuse. Wagman's focus on animal law was sparked by an ABA panel discussion he attended in the early '90s. When the newly minted lawyer arrived at the event he was a meat eater, but after hearing the details of livestock farming he emerged a vegetarian (and later turned vegan). A graduate of UC Hastings College of the Law, he followed this newfound passion in his career, despite the difficulty of building a lucrative partner practice around animal defense. To accomplish this, Wagman, 51, has carefully cultivated a pro bono network of attorneys. He has long-standing relationships with key animal-rights organizations, including the Animal Legal Defense Fund (ALDF) and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. He has also built a private practice focusing on pet owners, who are sometimes willing to pay nearly anything to prevent, say, the euthanizing of a dog that has bitten someone. However, the work can be difficult. Wagman often has to do a lot of creative lawyering to apply existing laws to helping animals (which legally are defined as property). "You can't just go to the animal codebook," he says, though he himself has authored a casebook on animal law and teaches animal law at three Bay Area law schools. Wagman says he uses legal tools "from all areas of the law," aiming "to find ways to protect animals that no one has done before." For example, last year he won an injunction against the state of Georgia to stop the illegal use of gas chambers to euthanize animals. Having Wagman on your side is "the equivalent of having the energy of several lawyers working for you," says ALDF's general counsel, Joyce Tischler, adding that Wagman is "extremely bright and a great litigator." For Wagman, the gratitude of his unique clients can make expending all that energy worth the effort. Canine clients, for instance, often pay with a lick in the face, and "you don't get that from a lot of corporations," he notes.
Usman Baporia
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