HOUSTON BAR FOUNDATION

On Becoming a Fellow and Lifting a Calf

PBy WILLIAM K. KROGER

Last year, we had over 200 lawyers sign up to become Fellows of the Houston Bar Foundation. This is pretty remarkable — a record since the Foundation was started more than 20 years ago. These lawyers will contribute more than $300,000 over the next ten years towards legal services to the poor and other needs in our legal community. We need more Fellows this year, and I hope you will consider joining us in 2005. If you would like to become a Fellow, please contact me or the Houston Bar Association for an application.
Professionalism of this type used to come easy to us. An embarrassing part of the “Texas Lawyer’s Creed: A Mandate for Professionalism” is the admonition at the end: “These standards are not a set of rules that lawyers can use and abuse to incite ancillary litigation or arguments over whether or not they have been observed.” Shame on us that the two highest courts were worried that sincere statements of timeless principles of professionalism would be the next weapon in the arsenal of the unscruppled advocate.
Waylon Jennings, one of our state’s greatest philosophers, wondered “Are you sure Hank done it this way,” and, you know, Hank didn’t do it this way. I have spent time trolling through the Baker Botts archives, and have reviewed copies of the firm’s Office Review from the 1920s. The Office Review would be distributed at least once a month and summarize the activities of the firm, as well as legal and business developments in Texas. The Office Review contains a treasure trove of demands for professionalism from the senior partners of the firm, legends like Captain James A. Baker, Edwin B. Parker, Hiram Garwood, and Robert S. Lovett. Professionalism and ethics were not a part of the practice of law; they were the practice of law.
For example, in the December 15, 1923 (Vol. 4, No. 19) edition of the Office Review, the firm published “Our Creed”:

“Professional preeminence, excellence of professional services, living fully up to the traditions of the Firm and to the standards set by those who have gone before us, and so conducting ourselves and our work in the minutest details as to reflect credit upon them – this must be our first care – our dominating purpose.
If we do not make a dollar we must so conduct ourselves and discharge the duties and responsibilities undertaken by and imposed upon us, that the name ‘Baker, Botts, Parker & Garwood’ will stand throughout the country as a synonym for character, integrity, honesty, promptness, accuracy, resourcefulness, initiative, tact, diplomacy and ability to produce results. Professional recognition and pecuniary rewards will follow, but they must at all times be incident to and not the ultimate subject sought.”

The writer, likely Edwin Parker, commented on the Creed, after summarizing the careers of Peter Gray, Colonel Botts, Thomas Botts, and Judge Lovett:

“Thus we read of some of the men who have gone before us and who have done their part towards making the name of ‘Baker, Botts, Parker & Garwood’ stand throughout the country as a synonym for: character, integrity, honesty, promptness, accuracy, resourcefulness, initiative, tact, diplomacy, and ability to produce results. Today - with you and me - how do we find it? Have we just cause to complain if our advancement comes more slowly than we would like? With those men professional recognition and pecuniary rewards followed, but they came as an incident and not as the ultimate object sought. Their first care, their dominating purpose was as is expressed in this, our Creed. And so must be our first care, our dominating purpose, if we are to carry the Firm to greater heights and ourselves with it.”

In January 1924 (Vol. 5, No. 1, January 10, 1924), the firm drafted a resolution that contained only three goals for the coming year (in contrast to the complicated business plans of the modern law firm). These goals were:

1923 - Three Most Important Accomplishments - 1924
Apropos of our Annual Firm Meeting, we resolve for 1924, individually and collectively -
1. To be better, broader and more public-spirited citizens.
2. To become more profound lawyers through systematic study and constant practice of the law as a high profession.
3. To advance the interests of our clients and of our Firm, and, incidentally, our individual interests, by hard, well-directed, effective work and  conscientious application to their business and ours.

In the June 16, 1924 (Vol. 5, No. 11) Office Review, Mr. Parker passed on a short homily from a client on the importance of hard work and patience, titled “Can You Lift A Calf?”
“Our good friend Mr. C.H. Markham, President of the Illinois Central Railroad System, tells the story of a boy who, beginning with a small calf, made a practice of lifting it each day. While the calf continued to grow in size and weight, such growth from day to day was not appreciable and the boy’s strength grew proportionately, until scarcely realizing the increase in his strength, he was able to lift a cow.
The application of this story is not far to seek. If each day we lift a little more, and go a little further, than we did the day before, we will come to be masters of, and carry with comparative ease, burdens which formerly seemed quite beyond our strength.”
I could go on and on with additional examples of such articles that the leadership of the firm regularly provided to its lawyers. These standards had a huge impact on the development of the firm. Do we still provide that leadership and guidance to our young lawyers today? We should. The ethics emphasized by our forefathers seem more relevant today than ever, where our emphasis sometimes seems more centered on the bottom line than on integrity and honesty.
Maybe one good sign that the worm has turned is our new 200 Fellows. And if you were one of those 200, thank you.

William K. Kroger is a partner in the law firm of Baker Botts L.L.P. He is the 2005 chair of the Houston Bar Foundation.

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