ATTORNEY, LAWYER CIVILITY: INCIVILITY COSTS!

Attorney Charles Jerome Ware is renowned and consistently ranked among the best attorneys and legal counsellors in the United States. [GQ Magazine, The Washington Post, The Baltimore Sun, The Columbia Flier, USA TODAY, The Howard County Sun, The Anniston Star, The New York Times, et al.]
www.CharlesJeromeWare.com

Civility (ci-vil-i-ty): a noun meaning "formal politeness and courtesy in behavior or speech"; synonyms: "courtesy, politeness, comity, urbanity, complaisance" [www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/civility].

Increasingly, a trend is growing that being a tough lawyer does not necessarily mean the abandonment of lessons we learned in kindergarten, such as: Be nice and treat others the way you would like to be treated.

INCIVILITY IN SOUTH CAROLINA

An attorney in South Carolina has been suspended from the practice of law by the state's Supreme Court, and ordered to complete the state bar's legal ethics and professionalism program for his "lack of civility and professionalism" while handling a zoning dispute with the Town of Atlantic Beach [In the Matter of William Gary White, III, Respondent, Opinion No. 26939, 03-07-2011, The State of South Carolina In The Supreme Court].

William Gary White III was found to have violated a slew of South Carolina’s ethics rules in a letter to his client, an Atlantic Beach, S.C., church that had received a town notice that it needed to comply with zoning laws. White’s letter, copied to the town manager and later made part of the published opinion, was a scorcher:

“You have been sent a letter by purported Town Manager Kenneth McIver. The letter is false. You notice McIver has no order. He also has no brains, and it is questionable if he has a soul. Christ was crucified some 2,000 years ago. The church is His body on Earth. The pagans at Atlantic Beach want to crucify His body here on Earth yet again. ...

“First-graders know about freedom of religion. The pagans of Atlantic Beach think they are above God and the federal law. They do not seem to be able to learn. People like them in S.C. tried to defy federal law before with similar lack of success.”

A town council member filed the disciplinary complaint that led to White’s suspension. In its opinion, the state supreme court held that White ran roughshod over an oath it implemented in 2003 mandating that lawyers act with “fairness, integrity and civility, not only in court, but also in all written and oral communications.”

White says he’s learned from the experience. He says his client told him to make the comments in the letter and at the time believed them to be political statements regarding a religious matter. “I thought it was free speech,” he explains. “I think the rules are clearer now; I didn’t consider it a breach of ethics before that. I considered it representing a client.”

The South Carolina court may just be warming up. “We take this opportunity to address what we see as a growing problem among the bar, namely the manner in which attorneys treat one another in oral and written communication,” it said in a 2011 opinion. “We are concerned with the increasing complaints of incivility in the bar.”

[www.aswllp.com/Daily Journal staff writer Dhyana Levey/ "Another Effort for Lawyer Civility"; www.choosecivility.org; www.google.com/civility; www.history.org/almanack/life/manners/rules2.cfm/"George Washington's Rules of Civility"; www.civiltycenter.org; www.thefreelibrary.com/ "Lawyer Incvility"/ 10-10-1996; www.judicial.state.sc.us/opinions/26939- In the Matter of William Gary White- S.C. Judicial Department/ 03-07-2011; www.abajournal.com/posted Jan. 1, 2013, by G.M. Filisko]