SPOTLIGHT CLE: A LESSON ON CIVIL DISCOURSE FROM

CLE Credit: 1.0 ethics Wednesday, June 21, 2017 10:40 a.m. - 11:40 a.m. West Ballroom C-D Owensboro Convention Center Owensboro, Kentucky

A NOTE CONCERNING THE PROGRAM MATERIALS

The materials included in this Kentucky Bar Association Continuing Legal Education handbook are intended to provide current and accurate information about the subject matter covered. No representation or warranty is made concerning the application of the legal or other principles discussed by the instructors to any specific fact situation, nor is any prediction made concerning how any particular judge or jury will interpret or apply such principles. The proper interpretation or application of the principles discussed is a matter for the considered judgment of the individual legal practitioner. The faculty and staff of this Kentucky Bar Association CLE program disclaim liability therefore. Attorneys using these materials, or information otherwise conveyed during the program, in dealing with a specific legal matter have a duty to research original and current sources of authority.

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Kentucky Bar Association TABLE OF CONTENTS

The Presenter ...... i

A Lesson on Civil Discourse from Harper Lee ...... 1

THE PRESENTER

Talmage Boston Winstead Attorneys 500 Winstead Building 2728 North Harwood Street Dallas, Texas 75201 (214) 745-5462 [email protected]

TALMAGE BOSTON has been a member of Winstead's litigation practice since 1997. His practice involves all aspects of dispute resolution in commercial transactions. With more than thirty-eight years of business litigation experience in Dallas, Mr. Boston has tried jury cases and argued appeals all over Texas in both state and federal courts. He is board certified in both Civil Trial Law and Civil Appellate Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization. Mr. Boston served as the 2003-2004 Chairman of the Litigation Section for the State Bar of Texas and as the 2004-2005 Chairman of the Council of Chairs for the State Bar. For his leadership activities, he received a State Bar of Texas Presidential Citation Award every year from 2005 to 2011. In June 2011, he completed his three-year term as a member of the Board of Directors of the State Bar of Texas. He is also a past Chairperson of the Business Litigation Section of the Dallas Bar Association. Since joining Winstead, Mr. Boston has been one of the most sought-after seminar speakers at state bar and Dallas Bar Association litigation seminars, speaking on a wide variety of litigation ethics topics. He has also been a featured speaker at the ABA Annual Meeting 2012-2014, and at the state bar conventions of Texas, Arkansas, Nebraska, New Hampshire, and Kentucky. Mr. Boston received both his B.A., cum laude, and J.D. from the University of Texas at Austin. He is a member of the Dallas, Texas, and American Bar Associations and serves as the Director of the World Affairs Council of Dallas/Fort Worth and the Dallas Bar Foundation. In addition, he serves on the Founders Board of the Better Angels Society, a non-profit that obtains funding for Ken Burns' films. Mr. Boston is the author of Cross-Examining History: A Lawyer Gets Answers from the Experts about Our Presidents, Raising the Bar: The Crucial Role of the Lawyer in Society, and Baseball's Tipping Point.

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ii A LESSON ON CIVIL DISCOURSE FROM HARPER LEE Talmage Boston

Two years ago turned out to be a bad year for heroes. A lot of people whom we'd held in high regard for a long time fell off their pedestals in 2015 – most notably:

 New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady got scarred by "deflategate" in January;

 Anchorman Brian Williams got thrown off NBC Nightly News in February for lying about his life story;

 General David Petraeus pleaded guilty in March for removing and retaining classified information without authorization;

 Bill Cosby's testimony in a sexual assault lawsuit was unsealed and released to the public in midsummer 2015, where he admitted he had drugged women in furtherance of his extra-marital sexual activities.

But maybe the biggest fall from grace in 2015, though, came in July with the release of Harper Lee's second book, . We learned that , a man the world has held in the highest esteem for over fifty years as the hero of Harper Lee's book, , and a lawyer who embodied our profession's Disciplinary Rules of Professional Conduct and our Kentucky Code of Professional Courtesy, may not have been as wonderful as we've always thought he was.

 Oprah Winfrey has called To Kill a Mockingbird "America's novel."

's career peaked with the Academy Award winning role of Atticus Finch. .  The Book-of-the-Month Club took a survey a few years ago and asked "Which book has made the biggest impact on your life?" To Kill a Mockingbird finished second only to the Bible.

 The American Film Institute conducted a poll to identify the "greatest hero ever portrayed in a motion picture" – Atticus Finch finished in first place.

All the appreciation and renown that had been laid at Atticus Finch's feet for over half a century came crashing down last July with the release of Harper Lee's second book, Go Set a Watchman, which portrayed Atticus as something less than the grand champion of Civil Rights in America that he had been in To Kill a Mockingbird.

In Watchman, to our amazement, Ms. Lee portrayed Atticus as a man who did not want the schools in Maycomb, Alabama, to be integrated promptly after the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark rulings in Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954 and 1955. He had a very different idea about what the Supreme Court meant when it said public schools should integrate "with all deliberate speed" as compared to the immediate timetable for integration advocated by the NAACP following the Brown decisions.

1 When news of Atticus' fall from grace in Watchman came down last July, like many others, I fell into a state of deep grieving. Let me explain why.

As a Baby Boomer—born in October 1953, I was in grade school in December 1962, when the movie To Kill a Mockingbird came out. My parents took me to see the film when I was a third grader, and if ever a movie ever changed a person's life, Mockingbird changed mine.

When I saw Gregory Peck standing tall as Atticus Finch in the Maycomb, Alabama, courtroom representing Tom Robinson to the best of his ability, with full blown integrity, charisma, and conviction, nine-year-old Talmage Boston walked out of the movie theater in Houston that night and said, "That's what I want to do when I grow up. I want to be a trial lawyer who stands tall in his community. When all my education is finished, I want to be like Atticus Finch." Lo and behold, I never changed my mind from that day forward, and I wasn't the only person who responded to To Kill a Mockingbird that way.

In my thirty-eight year legal career, I've come across many attorneys who embarked on their quest to become a highly esteemed lawyer due to circumstances just like mine– aspiring to be Atticus Finch. In fact, our profession came up with a term–the "Atticus Finch Moment." The "Moment" being the circumstances that prompted the decision to become a lawyer.

So without a doubt, over the last fifty years, Atticus Finch has been the single greatest role model for the legal profession –and nobody else has come close. He symbolizes the Preamble to the Disciplinary Rules of Professional Conduct as a lawyer who:

 "Had a special responsibility for the quality of justice;"

 "Zealously pursued his client's interests within the bounds of the law;"

 "Demonstrated respect for the legal system and those who serve in it;"

 "Sought improvement of the law, the administration of justice, and the quality of service rendered by the legal profession;" and

 "Rendered public interest legal service."

Above all, he embodied the final paragraph in the Preamble to the Disciplinary Rules: Atticus' "conscience was the touchstone against which to test the extent to which his actions rose above the disciplinary standards imposed by the Rules." Put all of this information together and there's only one conclusion to reach. For over half a century, Atticus Finch has been our profession's Conscience-in-Chief.

Six years ago, I re-energized myself over Atticus Finch. While serving on the State Bar of Texas' Board of Directors, I organized a full-blown tribute to Atticus at our state bar convention in Fort Worth in the summer of 2010 as we celebrated the fifty year anniversary of TKAM's publication.

Before the convention, I wrote a long article for the Texas Bar Journal entitled "Who Was Atticus Finch?" To address the convention, I got six high-profile speakers to give their personal take on the importance of Atticus Finch in the grand scheme of all things legal.

2 All the speakers rose to the occasion and waxed eloquent about Atticus Finch, including former U.S. Attorney General Dick Thornburgh, former U.S. Solicitor General and federal judge Ken Starr, and former U.S. District Judge and now the Dean of the University of North Texas Law School, Royal Furguson.

Besides the remarks from those luminaries, I also spoke at the convention on the subject "What Lawyers Can Learn about Professionalism from Atticus Finch." It was so well received that I've now given it to state bar conventions all over the – and to five law schools in Texas.

I give you all these details about my life and legal career not to brag -- but to drive home the point that before July of last year when Go Set a Watchman came out -- yours truly was heavily invested in Atticus Finch.

Now there may be those in this audience who think that my passionate adoration for Mr. Finch over the years is strange. After all, you may think: Atticus was a fictional character in Harper Lee's novel – just a creation of the author's imagination. And if you think that, you would be WRONG!

In researching my Texas Bar Journal article on the subject "Who Was Atticus Finch?", I learned that Mr. Finch was not a fictional character at all. Rather, his being a small town lawyer and devoted single parent with a deep voice, who was his community's moral compass, and who had represented black defendants accused of committing a heinous crime against a white person and tried it unsuccessfully to an all-white jury in his hometown courthouse, made Atticus' story match up almost identically with the life story of Harper Lee's father, Amasa Lee.

When To Kill a Mockingbird was released for public consumption in 1960, and until Ms. Lee stopped talking to the media in 1964, she repeatedly acknowledged that Atticus Finch was modeled after her dad, Amasa. She also admitted that:

 The character Scout was modeled after herself as a child;

 The character Jem was tied to her real life brother, Edwin;

 The character Dill was based on her childhood friend, Truman Capote;

 The town where Mockingbird was set, Maycomb, Alabama, was just like the town of Monroeville, Alabama, where she grew up;

 Tom Robinson's case in Mockingbird matched up with the real life trial of an African-American criminal defendant named Walter Lett who had been wrongly convicted of raping a young white woman by an all-white jury in the author's hometown, during the 1930s when Harper Lee had been Scout's age in grade school;

 And there really was a Boo Radley-type figure in Monroeville, imprisoned in his own home, named Son Boulware.

Putting all these facts together made me realize that To Kill a Mockingbird was more of a memoir of Harper Lee's childhood than it was a novel. That made the story and its

3 characters even more compelling because Atticus Finch was not a fictional character at all. He was really Amasa Lee, a man who was way ahead of his neighbors in being a strong advocate for the proposition that justice in the United States of America should be color-blind. He was a man who practiced law in perfect alignment with every word contained in the Disciplinary Rules of Professional Conduct, long before the Rules existed.

A few months before Harper Lee's second book, Go Set a Watchman, came out last July, media reports explained how it had come into existence and why it had lain dormant for so long. We learned that a few years before she wrote Mockingbird, Ms. Lee had written Go Set a Watchman in the mid-1950s, and like To Kill a Mockingbird, Watchman's main characters were Atticus Finch and his daughter Jean Louise, who in childhood had gotten the nickname "Scout." It was set in Maycomb, Alabama, although Watchman was set during the mid-1950s, whereas Mockingbird was set in the 1930s. That's all the media reports told us about Watchman's storyline before the book came out last July.

To explain how the book was about to enter the public domain in 2015, after Harper Lee had been saying for decades that she would never write another book after Mockingbird, the media reported that after completing Go Set a Watchman in 1957, which was her first attempt at a novel, Harper Lee had turned in the manuscript to a New York publisher. The editor, a woman named , rejected it, but not before offering a valuable suggestion to the author. The editor [Ms. Hohoff] told Ms. Lee, "Your book, Watchman, doesn't quite work like it is now, although you seem to have a good idea here with your characters facing tough racial issues together in a small Southern town."

Given how many flashbacks to Jean Louise's childhood there were in Go Set a Watchman, the editor told Harper Lee, "I think the book might work better if you rewrote it when Jean Louise was a child, and went by 'Scout,' like you did in Watchman's flashbacks when Scout was coming of age and beginning to process how her hometown, in a changing world, was dealing with its longstanding racial divide and tension that was on the verge of exploding."

The editor could see that Harper Lee's great gift as a writer was recreating scenes from childhood with the authentic perspective and sensibility of a child.

So, after receiving that sound advice, Harper Lee tossed the rejected Watchman manuscript into a drawer, went back to her typewriter, and in the next three years, crafted Mockingbird exactly along the lines suggested by the editor.

The rest is history.

To Kill a Mockingbird came out in 1960 and was a monster best-seller. It won the Pulitzer Prize and became the most important American book since Huckleberry Finn. Its success was so overwhelming. It thrust Harper Lee into the national spotlight and within a few years, Miss Lee decided to flee from her celebrity status. In 1964, she totally removed herself from the public eye and stayed that way until her death on February 19, 2016.

4 To the amazement of everyone, Ms. Lee never wrote another book after her monster best-seller Mockingbird. Her explanation for why she stopped writing was: "I said all I had to say."

Over five decades passed; and in late 2014, Ms. Lee's lawyer-agent, Tonja Carter, found the forgotten Go Set a Watchman manuscript in Lee's safety deposit box. Ms. Carter read it and thought it was a good story—well worth publishing.

She discussed it with her eighty-nine year old client Harper Lee, who at the time was blind, almost deaf, living in an assisted living facility in Monroeville, and, according to her friends, "had good days and bad days." Ms. Lee then authorized Watchman's publication, although the state of her mental capacity at the time she did it remains an open question.

Harper Collins brought it out last July with an unprecedented publicity campaign, and that's how Go Set a Watchman came to be published last year. Up until last month, it stayed on hardback fiction best-seller list.

As you probably remember – a few days before Watchman's release to the public last July 14, advance reviews came in from the New York Times and Washington Post. The reviews explained the book's plot.

In Watchman, Scout was not a child, but instead was a twenty-six year old young woman who went by her real name, "Jean Louise," who had returned home to Maycomb, Alabama after living in New York City for several years. Shortly after arriving, she found her hometown and her seventy-two year old father Atticus struggling to combat the attempted integration of Maycomb's schools which was being expedited at the behest of the NAACP. They wanted the United State Supreme Court's recent landmark decisions, Brown vs. Board of Education, (and the second Brown decision which came out on May 31, 1955) to be implemented at a much faster pace than "all deliberate speed."

Like To Kill a Mockingbird, Go Set a Watchman had as its central theme how white people in the Deep South were facing racial conflict and turmoil – except it was happening in the mid-1950s -- well before Lyndon Johnson pushed through the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968.

In Watchman, Scout/Jean Louise (not Atticus) was the enlightened soul advocating the need for immediate fair treatment of African-Americans. She aimed her double-barreled sense of righteous indignation at her father, who was attempting to put on the brakes or at least slow down the NAACP's efforts to integrate Maycomb's schools at a much faster-pace than Atticus' interpretation of "all deliberate speed."

The New York and Washington critics who issued the first reviews of Watchman totally panned the book. They were horrified that the honorable, enlightened, and noble Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird was now being presented to his adoring fans as an Alabama bigot. A man who opposed racial integration in his hometown's schools because he did not believe that rushing white and black children to go to school together was such a good idea at a time when Jim Crow laws were still in effect. Those being the laws that required blacks to stay in different hotels, live in different neighborhoods, eat in different restaurants, and be employed in different jobs than white people.

5 The public's reaction to these New York Times and Washington Post reviews before the book had gone on sale was incredulous!! What???!!! Harper Lee/Scout was presenting to the world of readers the story of her beloved father Amasa Lee/Atticus Finch, the man who had stood up and fought for Tom Robinson and equal justice in the 1930s, as a racist knucklehead in the mid-1950s on the order of George Wallace and Strom Thurmond. How could this be???!!!

This afternoon, I'm going to give you an explanation that attempts to put the puzzle pieces together and details how the Atticus Finch in Mockingbird and Watchman was the same human being – that person being Amasa Lee, father of Harper Lee. I'm pleased to tell you at the outset that it's a story with a happy ending.

Here's what I have concluded from my research about the lives of Harper and Amasa Lee and after reading Go Set a Watchman last July as soon as it came out.

The first thing you need to know is that when Harper Lee wrote Go Set a Watchman in the mid-1950s, her father Amasa, just like Atticus in the book, was an enlightened thoughtful man, but he did not want to lock arms with the NAACP. In fact, he resisted their efforts to get the public schools in Monroeville, Alabama, integrated in the aftermath of the second Brown vs. Board of Education opinion. To him, immediate integration invited anarchy. As I've said previously, integrating the public schools "with all deliberate speed" suggested different timetables to different "reasonably minded" people in 1957.

The second thing you need to know is that after Harper Lee quit the University of Alabama Law School in 1949, she moved to New York City hoping to make it as a writer. She lived in the Big Apple most of the time for over a decade until after Mockingbird came out in 1960. Just like Jean Louise Finch in Watchman, she returned home to Alabama to visit her father, other family, and friends, from time-to-time throughout the 1950s.

During those visits this young enlightened political liberal, who had been reading the New York Times every day for several years, surely butted heads with her father over his then-conviction, after the second Brown decision came out, that resisting rapid integration of the public schools was the right thing to do. He feared the likely fallout that would arise when black and white children sat side-by-side at school every day while the Jim Crow segregation laws were still in effect.

Per the Kentucky Disciplinary Rules' Preamble, Atticus Finch and his alter ego Amasa Lee practiced law knowing that, as lawyers, they had a personal special responsibility and timetable for the quality of justice in their community. Surely knowing that future litigation would arise over the meaning of school integration with "all deliberate speed," like most thoughtful lawyers, Atticus/Amasa was in an evaluation mode about the best approach for integrating the schools in Maycomb at the time Jean Louise returned home in the mid-1950s.

Knowing those facts about what was going on in the lives of Harper and Amasa Lee during the mid-1950s raises the key question for all of us:

Did Amasa Lee's/Atticus Finch's position in opposing immediate NAACP-advocated school integration not long after the May 1955 second Brown vs. Board of Education decision make him a Wallace/Thurmond bigot in 1957?

6 If your answer to that question is "Yes, that would certainly make him a bigot," then you also must necessarily brand U.S. Senators John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson as bigots. In 1957, both of those men, who in the next decade became Civil Rights heroes, wilted with respect to the proposed Civil Rights legislation before Congress that year. LBJ took the teeth out of the 1957 bill, JFK voted against the bill, and neither of them said a word in support of the NAACP's efforts to expedite the integration of public schools following the United State Supreme Court's ruling in Brown vs. Board of Education. Thus, Amasa/Atticus in Go Set a Watchman had exactly the same mindset in 1957 as future Civil Rights champions JFK and LBJ.

What the New York Times and Washington Post critics did last summer with their harsh evaluations of Atticus Finch in Go Set a Watchman was to impose a 2015 racial sensibility on a man who was living and making decisions in 1957. That makes the critics' assessment of Mr. Finch deeply flawed and highly unfair.

In Go Set a Watchman, as twenty-six year old Jean Marie Finch confronts her dad Atticus in 1957, i.e., as thirty year old Harper Lee was confronting her dad Amasa in 1957, over what she believes to be his unenlightened position on public school integration, she pulled no punches when they argued. She told him he was a SOB for thinking the way he did. I'm sure she was a persuasive advocate in support of her position that aligned with the NAACP's efforts at the time.

In Watchman, though, we need to take note of the fact that seventy-two year old Atticus did not refuse to listen to Jean Louise's side of the argument. Likewise, seventy-two year old Amasa did not refuse to listen to Harper Lee's side of the argument when she returned to Monroeville, Alabama, from New York City during the mid-1950s. As was his custom and temperament, as we know from his portrayal in Mockingbird, Atticus/Amasa, was a complete gentleman, and most definitely listened calmly to what others—including his enemies—had to say.

Keep in mind what events were impacting America's consciousness shortly after the Brown vs. Board of Education decisions came down in 1954 and 1955, as Harper Lee worked on writing Go Set a Watchman.

 Rosa Parks had refused to go to the back of the bus in Montgomery, Alabama, in December 1955.

 The Montgomery bus boycott then occurred in 1956.

 Also, only after President Eisenhower sent in federal troops, did the public schools in Little Rock become integrated in September 1957.

As of 1957, the facts established by what's known about Amasa Lee's life story are the following:

 He was a thoughtful, honorable lawyer, without a functioning wife (Harper Lee's mother, whose maiden name was Finch, was seriously bipolar);

 Amasa was highly respected in his community;

7  Early in his career, he had once represented two indigent and innocent black men who had been charged in Monroeville with the murder of a white man. In that case, Amasa, like Atticus in Mockingbird, had gone all out to defend his client vigorously, in front of an all-white stacked deck jury in Monroeville—only to have the jury find his client "Guilty" beyond reasonable doubt, despite clear evidence to the contrary.

But as of 1957, shortly after the second Brown vs. Board of Education decision, it was one thing in Amasa's mind to represent a black man facing the death penalty over a crime he didn't commit, as he had done decades before, and it was quite another thing to embrace black and white children rubbing shoulders all day long in the public schools during the tension of the Jim Crow era. He had always been a gradualist when it came to change.

Last July, right after Go Set a Watchman came out and the public finally got the chance to read the book, a Wall Street Journal article reported that sometime between 1957 (when Go Set a Watchman was rejected) and 1960 (when To Kill a Mockingbird was published), no doubt in part as a result of the arguments he had with his daughter Harper. Because of what was happening in America in the late 1950s, Amasa Lee had an epiphany about the need for a more rapid pace for racial integration in his hometown's public schools.

During that three-year timespan, Amasa came around and embraced his daughter Harper's view of the issue. He became an advocate for expediting integration and advancing civil rights and began pushing hard for African-Americans in Alabama to have voting rights. His moral transformation surely impressed his daughter as she typed away between 1957 and 1960 on the book that would become To Kill a Mockingbird – and would describe her family and hometown during a Civil Rights flashpoint.

Knowing that both her books were more memoir than novel, it's clear that Harper Lee had to portray the soul and moral compass of her dad differently as she wrote about him in Mockingbird—from 1957 to 1960, after he had had his Civil Rights epiphany—as compared to the way she had portrayed him in Watchman—written from 1955 to 1957— while he was still struggling to connect the dots about a morally appropriate stance as to exactly what the Supreme Court meant by integration with "all deliberate speed," amidst the emerging Civil Rights movement at that time.

Because Amasa Lee came around to fully embrace more rapid integration and civil rights during the late 1950s, Harper Lee rewarded her father by sanctifying him as the noble and honorable Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird, whom we've all known and loved for over half a century.

My hope is that all this information makes for a great, heart-warming story that (i) will allow readers in 2017 and future years to reject the short-sighted claims of last summer's book critics who labeled Atticus Finch in Go Set a Watchman as a bigot; and (ii) will restore Atticus Finch back up onto his pedestal, where he belongs as a bona fide American hero and the Conscience-in-Chief for our legal profession who practiced law in total accord with the principles expressed in the Preamble to our Disciplinary Rules of Professional Conduct.

8 But beyond restoring Atticus' reputation, which is the fajita part of my presentation, I have even more good news for you. Not only am I here to explain to you why Atticus Finch is still a noble, enlightened hero and not a bigot, I'm also here to put some luscious pico de gallo on top of the fajita.

I'm here to tell you that Harper Lee offered up as much moral wisdom with Go Set a Watchman in 2015 as she did with To Kill a Mockingbird in 1960. This time, however, her most recent published wisdom does not address the subject of racial intolerance, and the need for equal justice for all—which all Americans have needed to be thinking about every year since 1960. This time, in Go Set a Watchman, Harper Lee addressed the single biggest issue facing Americans in general and lawyers in particular in 2015, 2016 and 2017. Too often, we are uncivil toward each other because of our intolerance of opposing viewpoints and our self-righteousness about our own positions— circumstances which prompted the leaders of our profession here in Kentucky to create the Kentucky Code of Professional Courtesy that we are all called to embrace.

Just as To Kill a Mockingbird opened our eyes to the need for racial justice and Civil Rights in 1960, Go Set a Watchman can open our eyes as lawyers in this election year of 2016 to the need for us to operate in a mode of civil discourse and mutual respect toward one another, especially when we find ourselves in a litigation battle or a negotiation battle with opposing counsel.

Here is the wisdom for lawyers to learn from Atticus Finch and Harper Lee in 2016 about how we can break down the walls of incivility that create heated confrontations in our line of work.

At the 2010 State Bar Convention, in connection with celebrating the fifty year anniversary of To Kill a Mockingbird, we had rubber bracelets made that had inscribed on them the words "What Would Atticus Do?" I haven't brought rubber bracelets with me to give you, but I have brought these cards you can put in your pocket. What's printed on the cards is the pico de gallo on top of the fajita in this presentation.

I will read aloud what's on the card about the civility lessons emphasized in Go Set a Watchman, as you read it silently to yourself:

1. Don't judge others by their words or actions until you know their motives.

2. "A man can condemn his enemies, but it's better to know them."

3. "Hypocrites have as much right to live in the world as anybody else," particularly because "men tend to carry their honesty in pigeonholes."

4. No one can succeed in life by dependently clinging onto the conscience of someone else, no matter how virtuous that other person may appear to be.

5. If a person refuses to take time to understand a person holding different views, he or she will never grow.

6. A person's maintaining civility and humility when being engaged in disagreements has a transforming effect on the person on the other side of the argument.

9 7. Addressing confrontation over conflicting ideological positions is "like an airplane. One side is the drag, the other is the thrust, and together they can fly – though too much of the thrust makes it nose heavy and too much drag and it's tail heavy – it's a matter of balance."

Do you recognize how these seven civility lessons match up with the Kentucky Code of Professional Courtesy?

Turn your card over.

The Code says that:

1. A lawyer should promptly return telephone calls and correspondence from other lawyers.

2. A lawyer should avoid making ill-considered accusations of unethical conduct toward an opponent.

3. A lawyer should not engage in intentionally discourteous behavior.

4. A lawyer should not intentionally embarrass another attorney and should avoid personal criticism of other counsel.

5. A lawyer should strive to maintain a courteous tone in correspondence, pleadings and other written communications.

6. A lawyer should not intentionally mislead or deceive an adversary and should honor promises or commitments made.

7. A lawyer should recognize that the conflicts within a legal matter are professional and not personal and should endeavor to maintain a friendly and professional relationship with other attorneys in the matter. In other words, "leave the matter in the courtroom."

8. A lawyer should express professional courtesy to the court and has the right to expect professional courtesy from the court.

This wisdom you find on your card – that matches up nicely with the Kentucky Code of Professional Courtesy -- came down from Harper Lee in the following context:

When Atticus advocated his position to his daughter in Go Set a Watchman about the foreboding prospect of black and white children attending school together in Maycomb, Alabama, in 1957, and why he believed joining the Citizens' Council to oppose immediate school integration was a reasonable thing to do, Jean Louise "Scout" Finch absolutely leveled her father between the eyes with her righteous indignation attack on his views. As she tore into Atticus with her razor sharp tongue, and without any civility, and called him a "double-dealing, ring-tailed old SOB," he somehow listened to what she had to say, remained calm, and didn't stop being a gentleman.

After Scout and Atticus finished their argument in Watchman, she then proceeded to have a conversation with Atticus' brother Jack. Uncle Jack opened his niece's eyes to

10 the need for those engaged in differences over political or moral issues to maintain civility and respect toward those who see issues from a different perspective – just as Atticus had done when Jean Louise tore into him. To her credit, after listening to Uncle Jack, Jean Louise/Scout recognized the need to follow his advice, which allowed her to become the hero of Go Set a Watchman, by finding a way to love, respect, and want to stay close to her father despite their different political/moral positions as of 1957.

My friends here in Kentucky – go forth from here today and recognize that, contrary to popular opinion, in 2017 and the years ahead, unlike fallen figures Tom Brady, Brian Williams, David Petraeus, and Bill Cosby. Atticus Finch has not fallen as the Conscience-in-Chief and ultimate role model for our profession. No matter what the knucklehead book critics say. He still belongs as a legal hero on a pedestal and should still serve as a mentor for dispensing moral wisdom on how we should treat others, our adversaries. That is a wisdom we desperately need right now.

Now, when the inflammatory political rhetoric has exceeded our worst nightmares, and in the years ahead. I encourage you to rise above the fray. Practice law like Atticus Finch and Amasa Lee, like your Kentucky Code of Professional Courtesy calls you to do. Be in the business of civil discourse with and mutual respect for and even listening to those on the opposite side of your particular dispute or disagreement.

In the future, as you attempt to maintain emotional equilibrium amidst the discord that arises in the course of doing the important work that lawyers do in our society, I hope you will respond to it by asking yourself, "What Would Atticus Do?" Then reflect on the wisdom on this card that comes from the points Harper Lee made in Go Set a Watchman.

May you use this wisdom and the Kentucky Code to calmly break down the walls of polarization and tension that divide too many in our profession. Also, use it to inspire epiphanies inside yourself and inside others. As together all of us strive to focus a whole lot less on "e pluribus"– and a whole lot more on "unum."

Thank you, Atticus Finch and Harper Lee.

Thank you, my Kentucky friends.

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