Nothing Beats Money

The airy decor of the law office cried welcome to the shyest member of the accident-prone public, recalls Oklahoma City Lawyer Byrne A. Bow man. "An older woman greeted me with all the kindliness and warmth of an Irish policeman's mother." On the walls were about 60 framed photographs of checks for large amounts. They represented awards in damage suits and clearly implied that "there is nothing like money." On the waiting-room table was "a poop-sheet of the trade organization of personal-injury lawyers. It was advertising a seminar on how to get the big verdicts." As a "plodding general practitioner," Bowman reports with tongue-in-cheek hyperbole that he learned many a practical lesson on his visit to this "arche typical" personal-injury firm. His account, of course, is fictional, but the American Bar Association Journal found it fascinating enough to print.

"All our business is on a contingent-fee basis," boomed the firm's senior partner, a highly spiced ham called "the Colonel." "We know that a bigger verdict is a bigger profit." Eager to share his arts, the Colonel proudly conducted a "tour of the plant."

> THE PROPERTIES DEPARTMENT "reminded me of a shrine in the Catacombs," says Bowman. "I saw sacroiliacs, cervical vertebrae, skulls, everything." Props even supplied butcher paper for leg-shaped packages to be placed on counsel tables--keeping jurors in suspense through the trial. "Everyone knows that a trial is a drama," chortled the Colonel, "but few lawyers act on this knowledge. We follow through."

> THE PHOTOGRAPHIC DEPARTMENT was flawlessly equipped to produce "gory, grisly, money-making pictures" showing the plaintiff at every stage of his ordeal--all to bolster the Colonel's final, anguished argument to the jury: "This poor, helpless man has waited much too long for his money!"

> THE CASTING DEPARTMENT was run by "a lawyer who, like the Colonel, had been in drama at college." Casting was geared to turn a prostitute into an angel, to repolish a yaking common scold, or curve hard lips into "the kindly weak smiles of a deserving claimant." The main problem, the Colonel explained, was keeping jurors from discovering "true character" in the courtroom corridors "when the actor gets off the witness stand."

> DRUMMING-UP-BUSINESS DEPART MENT. "We do no soliciting," insisted the Colonel. But "quoting some canon of ethics," he declared that "it is not improper to call on a person when warranted by personal relations." As a result, the D.U.B.D. taught firm members "the need for knowing as many people as possible, particularly hospital managers, cashiers, nurses, interns, residents, practicing physicians, policemen, preachers and fortune tellers."

"All jurors are captives of their feelings!" said the Colonel as his staff gathered round to hear him bid Bowman farewell. "Their impulses will run away with their reason! Read Freud! The Israelites had Moses as their advocate with Pharaoh! We are the advocates for the poor, the sick and the helpless--millions of deserving claimants! Drive hard for your verdict!"

With that, the office force "broke into a loud cheer."

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