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A College For Lawyers Or Monument For Founder?
Last month, I swallowed my pride and went back to Wyoming to attend the 15th anniversary of the founding of Gerry Spence’s Trial Lawyers College. The event was also an 80th birthday celebration for the master himself. I vowed to go and to do something almost impossible – to behave, and not to raise any issues or to raise a fuss of any sort. And I succeeded: I was a quiet back-bencher.
But when word spread that I had set foot on Thunderhead Ranch, folks started contacting me. And I started to ask questions about what has been going on out there during the past 10 years. Why had so many of the old timers I knew and respected left the place? The answer is money.
The Trial Lawyers College is situated about 10 miles outside DuBois, Wyo., a couple hours east of Yellowstone. Snow-capped mountains mark the horizon; Castle Rock looms in one direction, appearing almost like a medieval fortress. The site was once a working cattle ranch. Spence maintained it as such for many years, before giving vast tracts to Wyoming for use as a wildlife refuge.
But the ranch buildings and surrounding land are ground zero for the college. Lawyers flock there from around the country to be taught to be better lawyers and better human beings. At the heart of the curriculum is psychodrama, actually a form of therapy pioneered by Omar Moreno last century. Participants learn to tell their own stories by such processes as role reversal and re-enactment of events. The college’s working hypothesis is that by understanding oneself better one can better understand a client.
The college has been churning out students for 15 years now. There are annual summer colleges and regional events throughout the country.
The program is dedicated to the education of people’s lawyers, that is, criminal defense lawyers and plaintiff’s counsel. Somehow, the college has decided that prosecutors and civil defense lawyers aren’t worthy. These lawyers represent the government and corporations, after all. And we all know that government and corporations will squeeze the Widow Jones until her dentures crack. Such is populist lore. It plays out West.
As a non-profit entity, the college depends heavily on contributions from former students. Each event ends with a fund-raising pitch. Amid the smoldering embers of passions stirred in psychodrama, folks promise to invest in something like Xanadu. At the summer session of 2009, for example, some 50 lawyers pledged donations of $400,000. Where will all that money go?
Apparently, things are not what they appear.
Although Spence is given to saying such things as the college belongs to all graduates, the fact remains that the land and buildings used by the college belong to something called the Spence Foundation. This foundation is a public trust: among the trustees are Gerry Spence, his wife, a son, and the brand-new president of the college, a lawyer from rural California who has been at Gerry’s knee for 15 years.
Here’s the rub: The Trial Lawyers College pays rent to the foundation for use of the facilities. The rent is the cost of maintaining and staffing the ranch. The foundation can rescind the lease at will, if it believes that the college departs from its mission. If the foundation pulls the plug, any improvements to the facilities funded by charitable contributors becomes property of the foundation.
Trial Lawyers College board members raised questions about the lease several years ago. There was a dust-up, and now those board members are gone. Other old-timers left the ranch, put off by the persistent plea for funds.
There is a heart of darkness quality to all this. Spence plays Mr. Kurtz it this drama. The man who calls himself America’s finest trial lawyer and whose homes are featured in design magazines demands tribute from lesser lights. They must build a monument to him while he lives. Tribute, he demands, tribute to show the love of those to whom he has given so much. But just what, really, has he given them? Not the ranch.
I wonder whether all the folks who have contributed thousands of dollars to the college know what they are buying. I wonder if Spence really knows. I suspect he does; he’s built himself a tax-free cathedral and filled it with worshipers. It spooks me.•
Norm Pattis is a criminal defense lawyer and civil rights attorney in Bethany. Most days he blogs at normpattis.blogspot.com.