Dallas Lawyer with Atticus Finch-like Attributes Leads the Voice of the Defense Bar

Transcription

1 Of Counsel Interview... Dallas Lawyer with Atticus Finch-like Attributes Leads the Voice of the Defense Bar Perhaps one of the first places that a defense trial attorney goes for support and education is the well-known, 22,000-member organization DRI The Voice of the Defense Bar. Sure, the group s counterpart, the American Trial Lawyers Association, now called the American Association for Justice, may grab more headlines, but DRI has quietly gained a reputation as a formidable advocate for defense-bar issues, while providing some of the best continuing legal education programming in the profession. It s also a key networking source with national and international reach that s had a history of strong leadership and committed membership. Last fall, DRI continued to pull from the top-shelf of the defense bar when it named as its president John Martin, a highly regarded mass tort and aviation litigation lawyer who s been associated with DRI for nearly a decade. Martin s also a senior partner with Dallas-based Thompson & Knight. John s been our top trial lawyer for many years and a leader in our firm and in our entire profession, says Thompson & Knight s managing partner Peter Riley. Our firm has a tradition of giving back to the profession, and John is doing that very well through DRI, as well as in other ways. His father contributed in many ways, too. I think the profession is lucky to have the Martin family in it. Given the ever-increasing billing-rate pressures and other issues facing the defense bar, Martin takes the helm of DRI at a difficult time, according former president of the group, David Dukes, who s the current managing partner of Columbia, SC-based Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough. The challenges facing defense lawyers from an economic and practice standpoint are significant, he says. Because of our resources and international platform, DRI can help defense lawyers address these issues. Calling Martin the consummate professional, Dukes thinks that Martin s the perfect man for the job at this challenging juncture. He s truly one the finest defense bar leaders we ve had, Dukes says. If I were casting for To Kill a Mocking Bird, and I needed an Atticus Finch, both in terms of strength of character and mental toughness and a little bit from an Continued on page 17 Aspen Publishers Of Counsel Distribution Center 7201 McKinney Circle Frederick, MD July/

2 Continued from page 24 Of Counsel Profile appearance standpoint, John s the man who comes to mind. Recently Of Counsel spoke with Martin, who in May was also named vice president of Lawyers for Civil Justice, a defense-bar advocacy group, about his career, his practice, and the history, current state of affairs, and future of DRI. The following is that excerpted interview. Of Counsel: As you may know, John, we like to start these interviews with essentially the same question. So here it is: Why did you choose a career in the legal profession? John Martin: Well, I grew up in a home with a father who was a defense lawyer. So for a long time I thought that I didn t want to become a lawyer, a little rebellion, I guess. But when I graduated from college, I went into the military for several years. It was during the Viet Nam War, and I was in the Navy for a few years as an officer. I had a lot of time to think and was greatly influenced by a guy I met in the Navy who had already gone to law school and convinced me that I should go to law school, too. That coupled with my father s influence and the fact that I liked the competitive aspect of the profession [compelled] me to go the University of Texas Law School after I got out of the Navy. When I entered law school, I thought that I might want to do tax or transactional practice. But during the time that I clerked at Thompson & Knight in the summer of 1972, I did a lot of litigation work and became convinced that summer that that was the right thing for me to do in my life. Looking back, I think it was the right decision. OC: What was it about litigation? Was it the competitive element that you ve mentioned? JM: Yes, it was the competitive aspect of it, and the strategy. The planning has always interested me. I also like the procedural and evidentiary aspects of litigation quite a bit. The Pivotal Summer of 72 OC: What led you down the path to become a corporate defense attorney and, more specifically, a defense attorney in the airline industry? JM: Again, going back to the summer of 1972, I was assigned a project working for a senior partner named Frank Finn who still comes to the office every day and I think is going to turn 80 this year. He had a great influence on my career and my life. I worked with him on a crash of an F1-11 airplane that summer. He took me to some depositions and had me do some research for him. I really enjoyed it, so when I came to work full-time at the firm, I asked him if I could work with him on some of his cases. He accommodated me, and over time I took over a lot of the aviation practice in the firm. I guess the big event in terms of aviation litigation came when a Delta Airlines plane had a terrible accident at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport in August 1985, Delta Flight 191. Frank and I worked on that case for several years. So I ve done a lot of aviation work before then and since then, but certainly that was when I got more involved with the large airline accidents. Since then, I ve worked on several major airline accidents. OC: The Delta case was obviously a very important case for you. When you think about another that you worked on that had far-reaching ramifications in the profession, what comes to mind? JM: I represented American Airlines in the crash in Little Rock that occurred in The litigation in that case went on for a long time, and there was a tremendous amount of discovery both on liability and individual passenger case damages. It was a very complicated piece of litigation. Also, I represented Continental Airlines in the crash involving the Air France Concorde. Continental was blamed for causing that crash, even though it wasn t Continental s plane. OC: Thompson & Knight continues to grow, as does the litigation group in the firm. What kind of marketing do you do within the litigation group? You re a prolific writer, which surely helps bring in clientele and solidify your client base as it is. What else do you do? Of Counsel, Vol. 27, No. 7 17

3 JM: I m a big believer in networking, and certainly DRI has afforded me the opportunity to network with a lot of great lawyers all over the country and more recently in Europe with the launch of our DRI initiative last summer, which I do want to talk with you about when we get there. The networking that I ve done has been successful. Of course, achieving good success in the courtroom is always paramount. You ve got to have talented people. I m also a big believer in team marketing, in selling your partners. It s always easy to sell your partner who has a particular expertise to a client who needs it than it is to sell yourself. I don t know, maybe it s just my personality, but I enjoy marketing my partners. OC: Thank you, and yes we do want to get to the DRI Europe launch as well as the seminars that the organization puts on and its amicus program. You ve been affiliated with DRI for a long time now. What has been one of its most important achievements? JM: To point to one achievement is very difficult. I think that our absolutely fantastic continuing legal education programs are certainly what DRI is best known for. Our CLE programs are second-to-none. They are outstanding in every area of litigation, and we continue to draw tremendous attendance to most of our programs. We re always on the look-out for cutting-edge topics to present either via teleconferences or segments of our annual meeting or stand-alone seminars. OC: DRI covers a lot of topics in its programming. What brings in the most people? JM: The largest seminars that we have involve product liability, pharmaceutical litigation, and asbestos litigation. The newest and fastest-growing programs that we have are our commercial litigation programs, including intellectual property. We have an IP program coming up in September in Chicago that I m very excited about. Our registration this year for our diversity program exceeded last year s. Earlier this year, for the first time in about 10 years we had a seminar for female litigators. We thought that we d get 125 or 150 attendees for that program; we had 250. OC: Why is the diversity seminar so popular? JM: It s a very important area. For a long time DRI has been committed to diversity. We ve taken some steps over the past few months to take our diversity efforts to the next level. For example, recently we converted our diversity committee from a standing committee to a fullblown substantive law committee with open membership to anyone in the organization. We now have hundreds of members [on that committee]. The decision to do this is no doubt the biggest reason why our diversity seminar attendance is up this year. This is the third time that we ve had this sort of diversity seminar. The first year s attendance was way beyond our expectations. Last year was high, and this year is even larger. Quality Attracts OC: Why is it that your seminars are so successful and well-attended, and why is there such a need for this kind of CLE training? JM: Well, they re well-attended because they are of such high quality. If you develop a reputation for high-quality educational programming, people are going to come so long as you have topics that are timely and relevant to people s practices. Second, our seminars provide opportunities to network in your specialty from around the country and also with clients. We have in-house participation in our seminars. Some companies hold meetings of their counsel from all over the country in conjunction with our seminars, and we encourage that and facilitate that by providing meeting rooms and refreshments. That s been very successful in attracting corporate involvement in our programming. OC: DRI is not particularly an ideologically driven organization. Why is that? Why has the organization decided not to become as politically motivated as the trial lawyers group? JM: There are certainly differences between defense lawyers and our good friends on the opposite side of the docket, without whom there would be no reason for us to exist [laughs]. But ATLA, now the American Association for Justice, has long had a political presence in Washington. DRI has chosen not to be a 18 Of Counsel, July 2008

4 lobbying organization. That s just not primarily why we are here. However, we do take positions on some issues. Number one, we take positions by filing amici curia briefs on selected cases. We also work through Lawyers for Civil Justice. We have four representatives on the LCJ board, and at all times we ll have at least one officer on LCJ. It s a separate organization, and DRI has representation on it. LCJ does become involved in civil justice reform issues, primarily through civil procedural rule-making and occasionally in legislation. From time to time, we do put out policy statements. For example, we have voted in support of legislation that would increase the salaries of judges. We think that s important and feel that the independence of the judiciary is under attack like never before and think that judges are under-compensated. And, the effects of that are beginning to show with some good judges leaving the bench and with a trend of fewer and fewer private-practice lawyers going onto the bench. We think that there should be a good mix of lawyers coming to the bench from both the public and private sectors. The numbers have gotten a little bit skewed in favor of judges coming out of the public sector and fewer and fewer coming out of the private sector. There ought to be a balance. OC: You mentioned the amicus program at DRI. I know that that s something that the membership is quite proud of. Could you highlight one of the success stories of that program? JM: We have filed a number of briefs in the past few years. The Stoneridge case ( Stoneridge Investment Partners, LLC v. Scientific-Atlanta, Inc. ) that was decided by the Supreme Court several months ago (in January 2008) was an important case involving potential liability of professionals for getting securities advice. We felt that was a very significant case, and the Supreme Court ruled for our side in that case. Another called Riegle v. Medtronic, Inc., was a federal preemption case involving a medical device. The manufacturer asserted a preemption defense, and the Supreme Court upheld that defense. We thought that was an important case, so we got involved. Euro-Expansion Broadens DRI s Reach OC: We talked earlier about networking and the referrals that DRI is able to offer members. You mentioned the new European branch. Could you talk about that? Why has DRI decided to expand in Europe, and why is it a significant move? JM: We have had foreign members for many years. We ve also encouraged that. We decided several years ago that we really should make a push to recruit more European lawyer-members to our organization. The world is becoming smaller or, as Tom Friedman put it in his book, flatter and flatter. So we made an effort to meet with some of our colleagues in Europe to see if they felt that there was an opportunity for them to work with us to establish what eventually became known as DRI Europe. There was a lot of enthusiasm about it, so we worked with them over the past few years and set up a European council composed of representatives from various European countries. We have had several meetings with the council, leading up to this past April when we had our first stand-alone DRI Europe program that we held in Madrid. We had about 90 people there, mostly from Europe. We now have about 130 European members and are growing every week. We think that this offers a great opportunity for European lawyers to learn about the American legal system because some aspects of our legal system, such as class-action, are becoming more prevalent in Europe, and more European manufacturers are becoming involved in litigation in the United States. OC: When you and some of the other leaders of DRI get together, what do you talk about in terms of what the future holds for the organization? JM: That s interesting. Right now, I m in Quebec City for our board meeting. Two of the most important aspects of this meeting will be a presentation of our strategic plan and a presentation by a consultant and expert about the future of civil litigation in the United States. This is a little premature, but we ll decide at this meeting Of Counsel, Vol. 27, No. 7 19

5 if we want to produce a white paper on the future of civil litigation. We all agree that we need to continue to grow and expand our commercial litigation programming. But at the same time, we need to maintain our high-quality programming in the products liability, toxic tort, asbestos, and pharmaceutical areas. We also want to continue with our diversity and women s programming. So we have a lot going on and are very excited about our future. Steven T. Taylor 20 Of Counsel, July 2008