Hearsay

At the southern gateway to the Land of Lincoln, where interstate highways converge on the Illinois side of the mighty Mississippi, a billboard proclaims this message: “Illinois has a history of pretty good lawyers.”

This is the Illinois State Bar Association's response to commercial contentions that the legal profession and judiciary are in elite cahoots, and that justice may be for sale at a price only the rich can afford.

Honest Abe Lincoln is the obvious image of the state bar in this campaign, and demonstrable evidence that lawyering can be the right calling for the virtuous man or woman who shares the 16th president's “faith that right makes might” or his “patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people.”

The point is, as the ISBA billboard suggests, that legal help is available and accessible, 24/7, at ISBALawyers.com. Click it and kick the bickering about gaps in affordable, accessible civil legal service.

Beyond this helpful advice, the presidential visage evokes and personifies a subliminal retort to previous anti-lawyer advertisements conveying the thought that Lincoln would be ashamed to be an Illinois lawyer these days.

Meanwhile, 300 miles north in Chicago's “Viagra triangle,” another billboard-type message offered legal assistance of an anomalous nature, likely at a price to be reckoned.

At the confluence of Rush Street and State Street, where happy times and happy hours abound, a matrimonial law firm hung a banner with its phone number and the subtle solicitation, “Life's short. Get a divorce.” Male and female figures in the artwork were as naked as the entreaty.

Reaction, both municipal and professional, was predictably quick. City workers confiscated the banner because, said the local alderman, the lawyers did not obtain a permit for erection of such an advertisement.

A five-day concatenation of commentary on the ISBA list-serve opened with reference to constitutional rights of expression, followed with fears for dignity of the profession, and plunged into sanctity of marriage as an institution.

One e-mailed observation, which might well be applied to either our billboard or that banner, posited: “If the point of the ad was to get people talking, it certainly worked.”

Perhaps so, but the slippery continuum between lawyering and huckstering has rarely been so graphically delineated. For our money, Abe Lincoln is a more rewarding portrayal of what's good about lawyers than a pair of frolicking philanderers.

The sudden death of a 46-year-old career public servant of the law is tragic enough without revelations of the influences that propelled her into oblivion.

Evidence that Jane Radostits, a star in the DuPage County prosecutorial constellation, tarried overlong at a carefree lunch with colleagues seems at odds with her reputation as a zealous advocate of law and order.

But when the car she was driving on May 11 veered across the center line at high speed into an SUV, she reportedly was talking on her cell phone, was not wearing her seatbelt, and had a blood-alcohol level three times the legal limit.

State's Attorney Joe Birkett noted this irony when he recounted her “life of protecting others and saving countless lives through her advocacy for children,” her compassion for crime victims and lifetime commitment to justice.

“Now in her death she can save more lives by using her own mistake and failure as a lesson to others,” Birkett added. “Don't drink and drive.”

Kane County State's Attorney John Barsanti thereafter imposed a stern warning to his staff. Don't drink and drive, on or off duty, or face sanctions that include termination.

“I believe we have to hold ourselves to a higher standard,” Barsanti said, recalling that the collegial culture of prior times combined working hard with playing hard. “It's not like that anymore. Those days are gone,” he said.

That's a tough sell to the dedicated prosecutor and public defender who have squared off for weeks in a contentious murder trial – one trying to consign a defendant to death row and the other vying to salvage a life of dubious worth.

When it's over, the emotional scars of the battle, for either, can ache for the balm of tippling with kindred spirits. (Read “Defending the Damned” by Kevin Davis.)

The influence is no less for judges, doctors, salesmen or athletes. Inhibitions and common sense can become impaired and give way to bravado and invincibility in those circumstances.

That's no sin, but in the extreme it could jeopardize one's license to practice law. Coming from two sworn law enforcement officials, this is expedient counsel: “Don't drink and drive.”