Court Opinion

ID: 9629916
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 09:52:37.182828+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:07:26.575388
License: Public Domain

MOSK, J.
I dissent.
The effect of this public reproval of the petitioner may appear to be of relative insignificance, but upon closer analysis the opinion is of transcendent importance to the legal profession generally.
Upon seemingly trivial provocation the State Bar and the majority of the court have taken action which is likely to produce an inhibiting effect upon community service and pro bono publico activities of countless members of the bar throughout the state.
Lawyers are equipped by education, experience and idealistic motiva*76tion to join a wide variety of community agencies. Peripatetic members of the bar are found in virtually every type of patriotic, educational, fraternal, social, cultural, eleemosynary and political organization, and it is almost inevitable that lawyers, being skilled and articulate, assume the positions of authority. As Professor James Willard Hurst wrote in The Growth of American Law (1950) page 355: “The lawyer [has] won his public leadership in the past largely because his profession helped make him a more objective and resourceful mediator of forces.” Indeed it is to the everlasting glory of our profession that so much of individual intellectual resources is devoted to the furtherance of the ideals and projects of community service groups. But, as Hurst observed (id. at p. 352), “this [is] not an unnatural aspect of a profession which [is] so directly and regularly called on to exercise wide-ranging skill in adjustment of human relations.”
It is also inevitable that the lawyer who assumes a position of responsibility in an organization other than a bar association will be identified, for the prestigious effect, as a lawyer. Rather than suggesting reproval or censure, however, this identification reflects favorably upon the legal profession.
I have looked in vain in the record for any activity by the petitioner that indicates intentional solicitation, advertisement or self-laudation. He served an association of apartment and rental owners diligently, gave lectures, wrote educational articles, and used his talents to assist the organization in solving its legal problems.
As the Standing Committee on Professional Ethics of the American Bar Association stated in its Informal Decision No. 528 (1962), it “is in the public interest that the lay public be generally informed about legal matters. . . . Lawyers who unselfishly give their time in such a cause [informing the lay public generally about legal matters] should not be deemed in violation of Canon 27 because incidentally they publicize themselves and show their competence to deal with the matters discussed.”
Similarly, an opinion of the Committee on Professional Ethics of the State Bar of California (1966-6) gave its approval to an attorney, identified as such, writing a regular column on real estate law for a real estate publication. It would seem that if a regular column by an attorney was permissible, a fortiori the petitioner’s occasional articles and infrequent seminar lectures should not be proscribed.
One suspects the State Bar' fears that the association activities of petitioner might produce law business. It seems to me that if, because of petitioner’s gratuitous assistance to the group, a member thereof might *77feel inclined to seek his professional advice or services on an individual basis, no violation of legal ethics is indicated.1 Quite the contrary, such reason would appear to be a more rational basis for selection of a lawyer than that which motivates many clients.
Lawyers who read the majority opinion and relate to the instant circumstances may pause, reflect, and be dissuaded from engaging in community and organizational activities. The communities, organizations, and the prestige of the bar will be the losers, not merely this petitioner.
I would dismiss the proceeding.
Peters, J., and Tobriner, J., concurred.

 Judge Charles E. Wyzanski, Jr., in his book of essays on ethics and the law, Whereas—A Judge’s Premises (1965), saw the problem in this candid manner: “I know that lawyers serve on boards of charitable institutions, on hospital boards, on university boards, and in other philanthropic causes; and in those aspects give their time. But some objective observer might say, however noble the motive, such association may have as its by-product some professional advantage. . . . We must be realistic enough to recognize that when we deal with the problem of public responsibilities of the bar, we are involving ourselves in something more than the work of a good Samaritan.” (Pp. 234-235.)