‘A Better Everything’

I was on the elevator down, but I got pulled out before I hit bottom. 

Alcohol was always a big part of my life. When I came up to Oakland to become a trial lawyer in the ’60s, drinking was a big deal. It was a very macho, hard-drinking profession—almost like fraternities. We would open up the bar at 11 for our 10 o’clock meetings, and people would be having bloody marys and beers.

Like a lot of lawyers, I drifted along until I had some real problems. I’d been drinking every single day from the time I was 16 until I was 47. I was still practicing law, going in every day, but I was drinking really hard at night and on the weekends—and once in a while at lunch. I was a functioning alcoholic. I knew that my liver was going out on me. And that I was either going to continue to drink and die an early, very painful death, or I was going to quit. 

On June 11, 1984, I had an intervention. My wife was the one that did it. She reached out to Ed Caldwell. He helped found The Other Bar, an Alcoholics Anonymous organization for lawyers and judges. I thought we were going to go meet with some friends of ours and have some drinks and dinner together. And it turns out that these lawyers—it was in a café down on Hegenberger Road—had set me up.

I came out of this meeting with them very angry, but it was exactly what I needed. I realized that they had hit me right in my face, in my ego. I did a lot of work to come to terms with who I am, and, as a result of the intervention, I quit drinking. We went to Hawaii, where my wife is from; there, I was able to heal myself, [and then] I threw myself right back into work, which kind of maintained me.

I was really hitting the bottle hard before I quit drinking. I tried case after case, and it caught up with me. Although I’d had alcoholism in my family, I realized I was stress drinking. Lawyers have one of the highest rates of substance abuse, depression and, unfortunately, suicide. … The alcohol is the medication, but the problem is we’re under very high stress. 

Lawyers think we can solve all of our own problems, so we don’t get the help we need. It’s always awareness first. You have to ask yourself, “Am I drinking for fun, or am I drinking for stress? Am I starting to rely on it?” And then you’ve got to take some action. It’s so easy to procrastinate, ignore it, pretend like it’s not that big a problem. 

There’s a lot of conflict in our profession. It’s very easy to deal with that by popping open a drink. As a plaintiff’s lawyer, I don’t get anything unless I take it away from somebody. Every single one of my cases is a fight. And you’re dealing with sometimes-difficult clients; you’re dealing with defense attorneys who want to fight you, insurance companies that hate you. 

I wanted to talk about my experience, because it was so related to stress. Ed and I had become friends, and in 1990 we began to lecture together around the state at our trial lawyer seminars, because nobody had really been doing it. It was not, “It’s just alcohol.” It was, “How do you deal with stress?” It was, “What’s really important in your life?”

One of my presentations was called “‘Am I drinking too much?’ is a rhetorical question.” I called my lectures “How to Get a Winning Verdict in Your Personal Life.” Then, in 2007, I wrote a book called Getting a Winning Verdict in My Personal Life.

Nobody in the trial world wants to talk about losses. I’ve felt that that was somewhat related to the alcohol problem, because there’s a lot of pressure on us to win our cases. When we lose, it can be devastating. I’ve seen lawyers that want to give up their practice. Some of them even become suicidal over dealing with loss. As time goes on, lawyers are trying fewer and fewer cases, and so each case you try becomes a cost to live, and a big deal. 

But trial lawyers have significantly changed. Younger people are drinking less. Society has recognized that alcohol is not very good for us. Our profession has been the better for the fact that we have much more awareness of the seriousness of substance abuse. 

Once I was sober, I was trying a tough med-mal case. My mother died during the course of it, and I lost the case. But I was at a different place, because I was sober. The positives were that my clients really appreciated what I’d done, I’d learned something, and I’d worked with my partner. And I realized that I had been able to deal with this loss in a very different way than I had when I was drinking.

I didn’t realize how I was being dragged down by alcohol. I became a better parent, I became a better person, and I became a much better lawyer … I became a better everything. I’m very proud of the fact that my career is not just about how many big breaks I got and what I won. We can all talk about that stuff. I’ve been able to reach out and help my profession. 

I’m going to be 89 in May. In my life, I feel 80 is the new 60. I’ve seen such a broad spectrum of my practice. I started trying cases in 1962, and I’m here now.