Lies Larceny & Lawyers

By Steven Winer

Martin Dawson, a young aggressive attorney practicing law in the large, metropolitan City of Minneapolis, Minnesota, desired to change his life and practice law in a smaller, faster growing community in a warmer climate to attempt to create a better life for himself and his family. Martin had a small base of Minnesota clients who were developing real estate in Southwest Florida, in and around the City of Fort Myers. Martin and his wife decided that practicing law in Florida may enhance the quality of their family's life as well as Martin's professional life. LIES, LARCENY & LAWYERS, takes the reader through Martin's journey of practicing law in four different law firms. It tells the story of Martin's frustrations with, not the clients he represented, but with the lawyers he became associated with through that journey. The difficulty of practicing his profession with lawyers who lie, cheat, steal and even murder to get ahead was a difficult course for Martin to navigate. Martin's quandary was whether he could find that perfect legal environment where the attitudes and comradery of the lawyers he worked with would allow him to find himself the professional fulfillment for practicing his profession that he was so desperately seeking. That journey was difficult, while interacting with unique individuals who made that journey nearly impossible.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 26, 2019
• ISBN: 9781796071290

Steven Winer

Steven Winer was born in St. Paul, Minnesota. He went to the University of Minnesota undergraduate School and received his B.S. degree in both Business Administration and History. He had season tickets for 40 years to his beloved Golden Gopher football games. He still attends as many games as he can each year. After a stint in the Army Security Agency, Steven then attended Law School at the University of Illinois in Chicago where he received his J.D. Law Degree. Steven returned to Minnesota, after finishing law school, and practiced law for 10 years in Minnesota. He then followed several of his Minnesota developer clients to Fort Myers, Florida in 1984, and continued practicing law until he retired in 2013. While practicing law in Fort Myers, Steven represented large banks, developers of large golf course communities and developers of high rise condominium. Steven practiced law during both the depressed years for real estate in the early 1990’s as well as the robust real estate boom during the 2000’s and the recession years thereafter, until he retired. Steven met his wife in Fort Myers who have been married for 30 years. Between them, they have 3 children and 6 grandchildren. Steven enjoys his retirement by aiding entrepreneurs fulfill their dreams of starting their own businesses. He also volunteers for the Lee County Visitors and Convention Bureau in Southwest Florida. Steven enjoys writing about his diverse experiences during the years of practiced law.

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CHAPTER 1

Martin Dawson was standing in a 13,000 square foot law office on the top floor of the Highland Park Building, without a person in sight or within hearing distance inside the office. Most of the furniture, conference tables and chairs, desks, equipment, computers, supplies and legal library books were missing. All of those items had been stolen or disposed of, in some fashion, by the other 45 people who use to work in that space. Martin stood outside of his old office wearing a pair of blue jeans and a long sleeve polo shirt wondering how all this happened. It was an unusually chilly day in Fort Myers, Florida, for February 12, 1998. Martin, a 53 year old attorney who had been practicing law since 1972 was not looking forward to starting all over again with a new law firm on March 1 of that year. He had been use to working in a medium sized law firm all of his professional life. However, his new firm, Spencer & Booth, was a very large firm with 350 attorneys, 660 employees, and 15 offices in 4 States. Mr. Spencer and Mr. Booth, had been dead for over 70 years. They started the firm over 125 years ago. Its main office was located in Detroit, Michigan. That firm represented some of the largest corporations and hospitals in the country. It had been a very successful and lucrative law business. The main office in Detroit had 76 attorneys, which number would change, from month to month, as attorneys would leave and new ones starting. Such was the practice of law. So many attorneys always believed that the grass was greener just around the corner. When would they ever learn the truth about the practice of law?

The Fort Myers office for Spencer & Booth, where Martin was to start on the first of March, would hopefully be, in Martin’s mind, the last professional chapter of his legal life. The Fort Myers office already had 18 attorneys, 6 paralegals and a dozen administrative and technology staff, and was still growing. Martin was to start in that office as a senior attorney representing real estate developers and banks.

As Martin was walking quietly, all alone around his old, and nearly empty law office, Martin had just heard rumors that one of his longtime partners, from one of his previous firms had been found dead floating off the Cape Coral Bridge in the Caloosahatchee River. Was it an accident, suicide or something else? The authorities were still in the middle of their investigation, which also included the investigation of several of Martin’s other partners. This was the fifth attorney, from the Florida law firms, in which Martin was a partner that had either died from some form of foul play, unexplained accident, suicide or some out of the blue fatal disease. How could so many deaths happen in the law firms where Martin worked? That chilly day in February, was the day that Martin’s current firm had just closed its doors forever. Martin, and all other lawyers and employees, were all working one day, and the next day they were all unemployed. The way it all happened was bizarre.

How could Martin, not know the real facts that caused the closure of such a vibrant law firm? There were always uncertainties and questions that Martin never received any answers to concerning important issues dealing with firm issues. The financial reports received monthly by Martin had probably been manipulated, by someone, to make the firm look more profitable than it actually was. Martin witnessed, at partner meetings, an abundance of bickering, which was not uncommon. However, it took a very long time for many of those partners to understand what devastating results that bickering would produce. They just continued to believe their firm would always prosper.

It was in January, 1998, when Martin received a very disturbing phone call. It was the type of call that lawyers dreaded. It caused hardships for most employees of his law firm and their families. It was the catalyst for the demise of the law firm. That call caused Martin’s current firm to die on the vine. Each employee and dozens of partners would now have to decide their own fate. That event caused one of the major hardships any partner would endure in any law firm, and caused the longest and most expensive dispute between the partners, its creditors and its banks. Martin was in total shock!

There had always been ego problems and greed issues between the partners which were well known to the management of every firm Martin was associated with. Each partner ended up falling into one of several divisions in each firm. The firms expected all partners to be fiscally responsible and stay within the budgets that management had prepared for them. This didn’t go over well with most of the partners. Every firm Martin was involved with seemed to be a disaster waiting to happen. That unknown event, the telephone call that Martin dreaded, happened that January evening, 1998.

Martin had attempted to adjust the practices and accounting methods for each of his firms, but Martin never got anywhere close to success. At the end of each year, each partner, in several of Martin’s firms would decide their own salary for the next year, with no consideration as to their financial income or other necessary contribution to the firm. How could a law firm exist in this fashion? It was a real eye opener to Martin. Martin, as a managing partner of one of each of his firm’s offices, usually got the brunt of the criticism for budgetary deficiencies. He thought about resigning and leaving each of the firms, but no other partner would accept or even attempt to manage the other partners. Martin just kept pressing and trying. That was always his way. There were always too many other employees whose lives would be affected by just giving up.

How did Martin get to this point in his professional life? Who were these people who he worked with and became his partners? Practicing law was supposed to be an honorable profession. Where does these impossible situation go from here? Many of Martin’s clients were confused and didn’t know if they should be looking for a different lawyer or even a different law firm. Clients were the breath of any law practice. Martin knew that. What was Martin going to do, and were the firm’s partners going to do something to try to remedy all of these difficult issue? So many unanswered questions on that chilly February day.

All of this was so different from the way Martin had imagined practicing law would be. Martin had been practicing law for nearly 30 years before that fateful call. He was never worried about making money. He had enough loyal clients he had acquired over the years. Most of them had assured him they would follow him wherever he may hang his shingle. Most, even stayed with him when he moved from Minneapolis to Florida. Martin attempted to always be a good, honest and ethical lawyer. The compensation package that was recently worked out by Martin and his new firm’s CEO, was one that was reasonable to Martin, and allowed Martin to make even more money, if he performed well, which Martin knew he could do. But this current disarray had to be taken care of. So many of his partners had just slipped away to other firms, other cities or places unknown. In less than a month, Martin was going to be a partner in even a larger firm with many more unknown partners and a management committee that was 1,600 miles away. Was he doing the right thing? But all Martin knew was the practice of law.

Most attorneys dislike their profession and complain that if it weren’t for the clients, the practice of law would be enjoyable. Some thought that to be a joke. Martin knew different, and felt just the opposite way. Martin disliked the profession because of the attorneys, not the clients. In less than a month, he would be a senior partner in a firm with 350 attorneys. At least 125 of those attorneys would be his partners. This would be his fourth firm in over 20 years. Martin’s greatest hope was that he would be able to retire from this strenuous profession without having to change firms again, and without any more strange and extraordinary events happening.

Martin, enjoyed practicing law when he began. His approach was honest and straight forward, in a way that most clients expected, and received from Martin. This was, however, not the way most attorneys practiced. Martin detested referring his clients, whether one of his own current clients or a new client, to any other attorney, even in his own firm. The reason was because it didn’t take long for the referred client to call Martin and complain about something the referring attorney was doing, or most of the time, not doing. Martin made a habit of returning telephone calls or faxes the same day he received them, no matter the time of day. If he told a client something would be completed on a certain day, the client received it that day. If, for some reason, the project was delayed, Martin contacted the client and explained the reason and told the client when they would receive the project. Clients appreciated it and respected Martin. For those reasons, most of Martin’s clients paid him timely. Martin got very few complaints on his bills. He despised attorneys who would put short generic entries on very high bills. Martin’s theory was easy. Explain to the client, either personally, or be specific on every entry, on every one of their bills, as too exactly what legal work was performed and at what hourly rate. He always communicated to the client, on every bill, what was discussed, in detail, during every phone call. Martin would sometimes even go to the trouble of dictating a memo for each substantial phone call, to document the file, and then fax or mail the memo to the client, so the client would not be surprised when they received their bill. Martin never thought it was hard to please clients, and clients were, for the most part, willing to pay him for his time, since they knew exactly what was done for them. Why was it so hard for other attorneys to understand that concept? Why was it difficult for attorneys to see and understand or, more important, to take any responsibility for the law firm’s obligations to its clients. Why do a few unethical attorneys not care that they make the profession look so bad? Was it greed? Was it arrogance? Were there any ethics at all anymore? And sometimes, could it even be criminal? In less than a month, Martin would start all over again with new attorneys in a different Fort Myers satellite office. His new CEO had agreed to allow Martin to take his assistant and paralegal with him to the new firm. The new CEO fully trusted Martin’s opinion about what his staff was required to do to make Martin and his staff successful. The new CEO wanted the lawyers in his new firm to be more than lawyers, but also entrepreneurs. This CEO, was a benevolent dictator, something Martin was unacquainted with how that would work. The CEO was willing to let each partner hire and fire their own staff as they saw fit, so long as that partner accomplished what was promised to the CEO at the beginning of each fiscal year. Those attorneys were compensated accordingly. The CEO of Spencer & Brooks, Martin’s new firm, had been running the firm that way for over 20 years. It had worked well. That was just the way Martin had trained himself to practice law and hoped this time all would work out.

That day, February 12, 1998, was still, in Martin’s mind, a sad day. Martin had been practicing law in one of the plushest offices for over 10 years. It was stylish and the most prestigious location in Fort Myers. However, all of the attorneys and staff had already left the firm. Martin, not by his choice, was the managing partner for that office. He felt obligated to stay until the office was completely closed. The breakup of the firm was not a friendly breakup. No legal breakups are easy. Each partner was out for themselves. None of the partners wanted to deal with any other partner’s perceived solutions to finalize a breakup. Most attorneys would not do their part to keep the offices financially afloat, but, as hard as it was for Martin to believe, his office survived until that fateful day in January, 1998. The attorneys that talked the talk the loudest were compensated highly, even though they may not have deserved it. Being in the right grouping of attorneys in a firm was advantageous. What had just happened to all these prestigious firms? Why was one of Martin’s Fort Myers old partners floating dead in a river? Why did other attorneys from Martin’s firm office die?

Martin was still walking around the now defunct 13,000 square foot office. Several attorneys had found a new firm. Several of the most difficult attorneys either left the area, or banded together and rented a small space about 3 miles away and set up their own new law firm. That venture only lasted less than a year. Martin was not surprised. Martin hoped that he was one of the lucky ones. He had been hired by a large multi-state prestigious law firm that had been in the law business for a very long time. That had to mean something.

Walking around this spacious office gave Martin chills down his spine. There was so little furnishings and equipment. Martin had no idea where all of the furniture went. Now there were just echoes. In less than a month, a new professional life would begin for Martin Dawson. He hoped that the attorneys at his next firm were more ethical and honest than most of the low lives he had worked with in the past. Working with attorneys was just not easy. Managing them was even more difficult. Every day seemed to be a financial struggle. Martin’s profoundest wish, was that his last few working years, would be much different.

Just then, Martin heard a phone ring. He picked it up. Martin had just been contacted by the local police about Blair Jones, the floater in the river. They wanted to question Martin about the incident. Why, Martin wasn’t sure, but he was about to find out.

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Martin graduated both undergraduate and law school from the University of Minnesota. He was born in Minneapolis in the upper middle class area of West Bloomington. He loved the U campus. He loved going to the Golden Gopher football and basketball games. Martin joined a fraternity and lived the campus life. Martin stayed in his home state for school and his first legal job. He graduated Suma Cum Laude and an editor of the Law Review. But legal jobs were difficult to find after he passed the Minnesota Bar in 1972. Martin believed that several of those large prestigious law firms, in downtown Minneapolis, would bid for his services. Life doesn’t always go the way you believe it should. However, Martin always believed he would never leave Minneapolis. That city was just starting to become one of the major hubs for law firms. But the major law firms wanted experienced lawyers, not lawyers who just passed the bar with no client base. Large national law firms, from all over the country, were filing large class action law suits in the Minneapolis Federal Courts. Those types of law suits took experienced lawyers to handle. Martin still believed there had to be a large law firm just waiting for him. Martin always believed that being a lawyer was a prestigious and honorable profession, and any recent graduate with an outstanding academic backgrounds would be at a premium. He always respected, and looked up to, the few lawyers he met growing up. Times really do change. The ability to immediately bring in fees and a client base was the name of the new game in town for employment. Little did he know? No one taught him that in law school.

Martin’s first legal job ended up with a small firm of 5 attorneys. Only the two attorneys whose names were on the front door were the partners, Harry Foster and Samuel Lawrence. The firm was known as Foster & Lawrence. It was made clear, from the beginning, that if one worked hard, meaning 80 hours a week, and brought in new clients, and brought in lots of money for the two named partners, a partnership would be their reward. Martin became good friends with the other few associate attorneys in the firm. All of them ended up working for Foster & Lawrence for several years. They each put in 60 to 80 hours a week. They were charging $125.00 per hour in 1972, but the discussion of a partnership for any of them never seemed to materialize. The two partners didn’t work on cases where the fee was determined at an hourly rate. It was just too much of a chore for the two older, long time attorneys, to send out monthly bills. That just wasn’t the way they thought they would get rich in the lawyering business. They liked contingency cases and large class action law suits. That was where the real money was. Personal injury cases and class action law suits, with a contingency fee of one third of the amount that the case settled for; or forty percent if there was a trial and a jury verdict.

The two named partners frequently requested the associates to do work on their large contingency and class action cases. The two partners spent more time out of the office drinking and traveling than practicing law. That’s what they had associates for. All contingency cases that came into the firm, no matter which attorney procured it, went to one of the partners. However, when the fee came in, none of that fee was attributable to any associate who worked on the case. It didn’t take long for an associate to figure out that almost half their time was working on the partners contingency cases. The associate’s cases, especially the ones being billed hourly, always became last on the list of things to do. When an associate would confront Samuel Lawrence about a very large seven figure fee that came in on a contingency case, for which that associate had worked hundreds of hours on research, depositions and writing briefs, Lawrence just said thanks to the associate and handed him a $5,000.00 check. That associate always believed that substantially more of the fee should have been attributable to that associate. Lawrence replied that he agreed, and always indicated that the associate would be taken care of at the end of the year. But the associate never received substantial additional money. That associate usually resigned two weeks later. Greed was the game at Foster & Lawrence. Another associate was hired two days later with an aspiration of someday being a partner in Foster & Lawrence. It didn’t take long for that associate to figure out how Foster & Lawrence worked. But legal jobs, at a good wage, were hard to find in the early seventies. So most of the attorneys who ended up working for Foster & Lawrence worked there for at least three to five years. The base pay was good for that size firm. Then they moved on. That illusive promise of partnership that was given to each new associate was just a deception. Lawyers can be the most persuasive liars!

Martin Dawson knew this within a year of working at that firm. Attorney’s deceptions were the downfall of the profession. Law schools were spitting out lawyers by the dozens. A new law school seemed to materialize about every six months in Minnesota. Law Schools were a great money maker. That was the predominant reason many attorneys, starting their careers in the early 1970’s, didn’t do very well, unless they graduated in the top 10 percent of the most prestigious ivy league schools. Competition was extremely rapid. This caused attorneys to move from firm to firm many times during those years. As to their clients and employers, most attorney’s deceptions were just plain unethical. However, deceptions were also one of the reasons many attorneys did not make the type of money they expected when they choose the profession. Deceptions and attorneys are, in most cases synonymous with small and medium sized law firms.

Martin worked hard to procure his own clients and learned to treat those clients well. This was a trait that he had learned from his father. Martin’s father was an entrepreneur, not a lawyer, but a true entrepreneur. He always worked for himself, in several professions and he always worked hard. Martin’s father owned a grocery store and butcher shop. He sold them to purchase a McDonald’s franchise. Then he sold that to purchase several Burger Kings. Martin was a small partner in the Burger Kings and they sold them when Martin’s father retired. His father didn’t retire rich, but he was well enough off to retire to Florida.

Martin worked his way through high school, college and part of law school by working for his father. Martin was taught, at any early age, that the customer was always right. Do whatever it takes to please a customer and you will have that customer for life. One of the first things Martin’s father explained to each new employee who worked for him, was that the customer was always right. No matter what! Never question a customer. Just fix the problem, whether you believe that the customer had a legitimate complaint or not. Martin observed this first rule of business first hand. If a customer purchased a hamburger and he didn’t want mustard, and that customer came back to the counter complaining there was mustard on the burger, each employee was required to say that he was sorry about the mistake, take the burger back and get a new burger without mustard for that customer as fast as possible. If the employee happen to look under the bun to see if there really was mustard on the burger, he was fired. In business, any kind of business, perception is reality. Don’t question the customer. This was Martin’s rule of thumb when he practiced law. If a client questioned Martin about a charge on a bill, he always asked the client how much he thought the charge should have been. Put the client a little on the defensive. However, whatever the client said, even if it was zero dollars, Martin adjusted the charge. His clients respected it. However, if a certain client took advantage of that and questioned every bill Martin sent out, Martin would just tell him to find a new lawyer. The law business was not the hamburger business. But the concept was the same. So Martin’s client base grew while he worked for Foster & Lawrence.

After working for Foster & Lawrence for 6 years, which was one of the longest stints for an associate, Martin was actually bringing in a fair salary for himself. But with a wife and a young child, Martin knew he had to find employment where he could become an owner of the business, as a partner in a law firm, and start to make some real money. Some of Martin’s clients were real estate developers. Many of their developments were located in Southwest Florida. That area was a small sleepy community that was just starting to grow. The weather was picture-perfect and people who were ready to retire really didn’t want to retire to a home owners community or condominium development on the East Coast of Florida. The Midwestern morality and way of living were just not there. The East Coast of Florida was a retirement location mostly for people from New York, New Jersey and other Eastern States. People from Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan and Iowa seemed to like the laid back Florida West Coast style of living. Much of the new developments in the late seventies were on the barrier islands of Sanibel, Captiva, Pine Island and Estero Island, just off the Coast of Lee County and the city of Fort Myers. Other less expensive developments were popping up all over the Fort Myers area adjacent to or close to the Gulf of Mexico or the Caloosahatchee River which dissected the County. Martin would take trips to Fort Myers almost monthly to meet his clients who were developing small home owner communities or condominium developments on the barrier Islands and in Fort Myers. Martin believed the best way to represent a client was to be at the actual location and observe it in order to best advise the client on how the documents for the community should best be written for the benefit of the developer client. Working for Foster & Lawrence gave him that opportunity. His client base continually increased. He was working on an hourly basis. The partners ignored those types of matters. But Martin was compensated for the fees he generated in those matters.

Martin started to work with several Fort Myers law firms, since he wasn’t a licensed Florida attorney. He found the area a very compelling location for people to relocate. Some of the firms that he worked with asked him if was going to take the Florida Bar exam and relocate. They talked about hiring him. His client developments were doing well and some of his clients actually moved, part time or even full time, to Fort Myers or Sanibel Island. Martin knew he would never become a partner at Foster & Lawrence, so maybe a move should be something to think about. His biggest concern was the Florida Bar. After working for 6 years after law school and passing the Minnesota Bar, the last thing Martin wanted to do was to take the necessary time to study for another two day exhausting test. After that concern, was his wife, Linda, and his little girl who was just 4 years old? What would they think about moving from Minneapolis, where they had lived for years and enjoyed the amenities of a large metropolitan area, to a small town on the West coast of Florida? Probably a bad idea. But the thought never left his mind. He thought about his father who bought and sold his business several times to better himself and his family. Why not him?

So, almost 6 years to the date after he was hired by Foster & Lawrence, Martin quit. He decide to take two months off to study for the Florida bar. He kept in touch with his Florida real estate developer clients so that they knew what he was doing. They liked the idea. Martin would still advise them and work a couple of hours a week, but his main thrust was passing the Florida bar. In the last week in February, 1979, Martin flew to Tampa, Florida, checked into the downtown Hyatt Registry Hotel, which was three blocks from where the exam was given, and took the Bar exam. Three days later he flew back to Minnesota and waited for the results. That would take at least 3 months.

During that time, Martin rented a small suite, in an all-suite office, in downtown Minneapolis where there was a whole floor of suites, a receptionist for all the renters of the suites, and a secretarial pool, who were paid by the hour, as needed. Martin started his own practice, in this suite of offices, while he waited for the Florida bar exam results. Martin’s wife finally came around, after many hours of intense discussions, and finally accepted leaving the cold and snowy Northland. It was good timing also for their daughter, Lauren, who could start first grade in Florida. He felt there would be no problem finding a job, since each firm he worked with, actually told him to get in touch with them if he ever relocated to Florida. Now all that was left to be done was to just pass the Bar!

CHAPTER 2

There were 3 parts to the Florida Bar Exam. The Multi-State exam which was given by most of the State Bar examiners. That consisted of 100 multiple choice questions in which each candidate received 8 hours to complete. Each of those questions had 5 possible answers, at least 3 of the answers could be correct. The trick was to pick the best of the 3 correct answers. They were all objective questions, either your right or your wrong. One needed 70 correct answers to pass that part of the exam.

The second part of the exam consisted of 8 essay question. Each question was on one or two disciplines of the law, such as contracts, torts, criminal law, divorce, equity, real estate, trust & wills, etc. Each candidate received 8 hours to write the answer to all 8 of those essay questions. The answers to those questions were subjective. You hope to get an examiner that graded your essay questions who woke up on the right side of the bed that morning. Each question was graded between 0 and 100. An average of 70% was required to pass that part of the test. However, Martin was told by another person staying at the Hyatt, who was also studying for the test, that if a grade on an essay question was less than 70% but more than 60%, a second pair of eyes by a second examiner would review the answer to see if it was a pass or fail. Only rumors. There were so many rumors flying around by all of the candidates completing last minute cramming for the exam that Martin didn’t know who or what to believe.

Martin felt he was ready for the test since he studied materials given to him by a Minnesota lawyer friend who took the Florida test three years prior. Martin had the study materials for the test that was available 3 years ago. There were no review courses for the Florida bar exam in Minnesota. And each review class lasted several weeks. Martin just wasn’t going to go to Florida and take that amount of time to take one of those courses. He was just going to wing it. But Martin studied each subject, from his materials, several times, 4 hours a day, 7 days a week, for four weeks. He felt prepared. However, the night before the bar exam, Martin went down to the lobby at the hotel to get some food to take to his room. He was in the elevator with 3 other recent law graduates who were cramming. He listened to them speculate on which disciplines of the law would be part of the 8 essay questions. They all agreed that since equity and divorce law had just been added to the test that year, at least one of those would be one of the questions. Since Martin studied for the exam with 3 year old materials, the two new disciplines, equity and divorce law materials, were not included in Martin’s packet. So Martin had not studied for either equity or divorce law questions. He panicked. But after an hour of sweating, he came to his senses and determined that since he had practiced law for 6 years he would have some insight on those disciplines. Also, Martin had worked some divorce cases over the years. Lastly, many equity issues were involved in nearly every type of legal case Martin had worked on. Therefore, he reluctantly felt that he should be able to bluff his way through those subjects. Maybe? Neither of those disciplines were on the Bar Exam test that year!

The third, and final part of the Bar Exam, was a uniform ethical exam consisting of 50 multiple choice questions. It was a two hour exam. The ethics part was given in all of the States as part of their Bar exam. A score of 40 correct answers was needed to pass. That test could be taken in any State, at any time, either before or after one takes the Bar Exam. The results were transferrable between state bar associations since the test was the same in every state. Martin had taken the exam several months before he went to Tampa. He made arrangements to take the test at a Community college close to his home. A professor at the college monitored the test for him. A 50 page booklet, outlining the ethics of practicing law, was given as a study guide when a candidate applied to take the Bar exam. Martin thought the booklet and the test was a joke. A third grader could pass that test with an hour worth of studying. He was notified three weeks after he took the test that he passed with all 50 questions correct. Martin believed that the least important part of any bar exam was the ethical exam. Nearly no one ever failed. It seemed to Martin that ethics was not one of the virtues that bar examiners, or even state bars, were looking for in a candidate to practice law in their state. What a surprise!

After Martin finished the grueling two day ordeal of the Florida Bar exam, he returned to Minnesota. He thought to himself that he never wanted to go through that again, no matter how much he and his wife may want to move to Florida. If he failed the test he would just stay in Minnesota and practice law. The winters were brutal, but he had lived there all his life, so he knew he could bear it if he had to. Then he wouldn’t have to give up his Golden Gopher football season tickets. They hadn’t gone to a Rose Bowl game since 1961, and maybe they would surprise everyone and win a Big Ten Title. Life wouldn’t be that bad in Minnesota.

The next three months dragged on. Martin was practicing law, mostly part time with his highest paying Minnesota clients, but he continued to go to Florida at least once a month to keep up with his Florida developer clients, just in case he passed the exam. When he was in Florida, he would usually stay about a week. During that time he not only worked with his Minnesota developer clients, but whenever possible, spoke with several local Fort Myers law firms concerning employment. Several were very interested since Martin had several developer clients building large developments in Fort Myers and on several of the barrier Islands. Those types of clients always generated lots of fees for many lawyers in a firm. There were land use regulations and density issues to be resolved before construction could start. A multitude of contracts between the general contractor and their subcontractors had to be negotiated and drafted. Possible conflicts with payments between the general contractor and his subcontractors would always come up and need to be resolved. Homeowner association documents for the developments and condominium documents which had to be approved by the Florida Department of Condominium needed to be drafted. Purchase agreements for the buyers of the residential or commercial units had to be drafted and approved by the State. Then the actual closings for each unit had to be completed. All this generated lots of fees for many attorneys. However, passing the Bar was the prerequisite to employment. Each firm told Martin to come back after he passed the Florida bar exam. Again, the time dragged. When would he find out? Having your life on hold was not easy for Martin. Time went by very slowly.

Finally, in late May, 1978, an envelope came in the mail to Martin’s downtown law suite. The return address was The Board of Bar Examiners, Tallahassee, Florida. Martin looked at it. He wanted to rip it open, but the rest of his life was in that envelope. He had passed the ethical portion of the Bar, but that was the easy one. It was the other two portions of the exam that scared him to death. The average pass rate for out of State attorneys in the last Florida Bar exam back in July, 1977 was only 56%. What would it be this time, and which side of the equation would Martin be on? He knew he had to open it.

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Martin drove the crowded 1-35 corridor from his downtown office, south to I-495 and then west towards West Bloomington. It was always crowded on the interstate, but if it wasn’t snowing he could make it home in 45 minutes. The unopen envelope was in his briefcase. He decided to open it when his wife, Linda was with him. Her life would be changed as much as his, if he passed. That evening, just before dinner, Martin poured himself a Crown Royal and water on the rocks and retrieved the envelope. He told Linda that he had just that day received the results for the Florida Bar exam.

So? Did you pass? Enthusiastically asked Linda.

I don’t know. I haven’t open the envelope yet.

What? How long have you had the results? again asked Linda?

Just got it in today’s mail. Since your life will change as much as mine, I thought we should open it together.

OK, I’ll open it. Said Linda.

As Linda tore open the top of the envelope, she took out several documents inside. She open the first page, and at the top of the first letter was the word ‘CONGRATULATIONS’.

Fuck! I passed! Said Martin. Read more.

It says, your score on the Muti-State portion was 73%, and the essay portion was 78%. Out of the 235 people who took the test 52% passed. Of the 123 that passed, your score ranked 101st. Not great. Continued Linda.

Who cares what my ranking was, all I care is that I passed. Holy shit! We need to celebrate!

Watch your language, Laura is in the next room! Linda whispered very quietly.

The letter also stated that the Bar Examiners had received all of the necessary documents, recommendations and transcripts for Martin to immediately become a member of the Florida Bar. Then it went on to indicate how Martin could get sworn in. There was a formal swearing in at the Florida Supreme Court Chambers on July 24, 1978 at 1:00 PM where the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Florida would swear in all successful candidates who attended that day. Each new attorney could invite up to 6 persons to