by Justice William W. Bedsworth

When I was a member of the Board of Directors of this organization, I got roped into serving on a committee planning a bar event. I thought the chance to talk to some judges might increase our attendance and wondered aloud how we might ensure their attendance. A more experienced board member smiled at me and said, “Beds, you can hold an event at 3 a.m. in the Cleveland National Forest, and if there’s free food, judges will show up.”

I’m not sure that adage applies to the gamut of judges any more—or if it ever did—but it still applies to me. A chance to talk to lawyers and eat for free? I’m there.

At one of these events, I recently met a law student who responded to my question about her future plans by saying she wanted to go into family law. I put down my glass and applauded.

Needless to say, heads turned. In several directions. People first looked for the applauder,¹ then searched the room to find what he was applauding.

I’ve reached an age where nobody’s going to be completely surprised if I go walkabout without warning, so people who know me just returned to their conversations after a quick comment about how surprised they were that I still had any marbles left to lose.

But they all turned back when I said, “Good for you. We don’t do anything more important than family law.”

My above-mentioned age has had an auditory effect. My hearing is somewhat less acute than it was when I was twelve and could hear my mother mixing cookie dough from the next block.

As a result, I sometimes speak a little loudly. Some of what I say can be heard in as many as three zip codes besides the one in which I’m speaking. My poor wife² lives in constant fear of what I might inadvertently divulge.

And when a roomful of lawyers who don’t practice family law hears you make a statement like that one . . . well . . . you’re gonna get a chance to defend it.

First I had to deal with the third member of the shrewdness³ of law students I was talking to.⁴ She said she was clerking in preparation for a career in transactional law. “See,” I said, “that’s what family law is: transactional law with lives at stake.”

And I will happily defend that position against all comers. I was not qualified for the family law bench because my math skills . . . well, to use the technical legal term, suck swamp water.

Some aspects of family law require both math and imagination. “Yes, but if he keeps the house and she gets the boat and the pension, the tax liability will be better for both of them. And she can roll over the 401(r) into a Haggard/Brooks trust and save at least $400 a month more than he could with the same assets.”

That’s transactional work at its finest. And it might mean somebody gets a college education who wouldn’t otherwise. That’s a contract that merits the attention of someone with first-class lawyering skills.

Then an old friend from the district attorney’s office drifted over. “Family law? Family law!? Beds, we tried murder cases together.”

I didn’t have a ready response for this. I ended up emphasizing that I hadn’t said it was the only important thing we do. “We did a lot of important stuff back then, and we did it, as John Stewart⁵ would say, ‘pretty up and walkin’ good.’ Jeez, I can’t think of anything offhand that lawyers do that isn’t important. I just put families and children at the top of my list. Feel free to score it differently.”

He laughed and shook his head.⁶ Then we reminisced about those days at the beginning of our career. And we remembered one of my favorite stories about the DA’s office.

Ed Merrilees, who was one of the top administrators in the office, sent out a memo explaining that he wouldn’t be able to attend an upcoming meeting because, “I’ll be leaving early for the Indian Princesses Weekend Campout. They can’t do anything without Big Eagle.”

Big Eagle.

Poor Ed. He was Big Eagle for the rest of his illustrious career. Memos were sent out addressed to “Cecil Hicks, Jim Enright, Ed Freeman, Big Eagle, Bill Bedsworth, John Conley . . . .” You don’t like your assignment? “Sorry, man, I can’t help you; you’ll have to talk to Big Eagle.” So help me, if we all chipped in to buy him a tombstone, that’s what it would say.

And as we laughed about that story, I realized the real reason I like bar events. Sure, I like free food. I didn’t get this body by turning down stuffed mushrooms and shrimp on a toothpick. But that’s not it.

It’s that I like lawyers. I enjoy being around them. I take pleasure in their company.

I’ve had plenty of problems with them in courtrooms. Professionally, they can be a huge pain in the [insert body part of your choice; my editor has enough to do without having to clean up my prose].

But personally, my fifty-seven years of dealing with them has convinced me they are overwhelmingly funny, fair-minded, friendly people who care about others. Our society reposes a tremendous amount of trust in lawyers, and they generally live up to that trust.

And no problem requires you to repose more trust in someone than a family law problem. I’ve been there. And I know how desperately I needed wise counsel, kind understanding, and yes . . . transactional skills.

My wish for you is that you never have to go through that. But the odds are that you—or someone you love—will. And when that happens, you’re not going to think the most important lawyer in the room is the one who tries murder cases or multi-million dollar class actions. It’s going to be the one who’s handling your family law case.

We don’t have enough of these people. It’s difficult work that demands attention to detail, imagination, dedication, and a thick skin. There are lots of people in our profession who have those qualities, and we need more of them to go into family law. The chance to make a real difference is there every day in that specialty, and we should be encouraging more of our best to take it up.

Meanwhile, next time you meet a family lawyer, put down your drink and applaud.

BEDS NOTES

1. A word I don’t think I’ve ever used before. Of the millions of words I’ve used in my phenomenally garrulous life, I don’t think I’ve ever called on that one before.
2. A woman who redefines the word “longsuffering” every day.
3. There doesn’t appear to be a word for a gathering of law students. We all know about a “flock” of geese and a “murder” of crows, but I was unable to find an equivalent word for law students. This one seemed appropriate—although I’m a little taken aback by the fact it’s actually the word for a gathering of apes.
4. I like talking to law students. They think my title must mean I’m as smart as the other people who’ve done that job.
5. John Stewart with an “h”. The Kingston Trio John Stewart. Listen to “Mother Country” to get the reference.
6. I get that a lot.

William W. Bedsworth was an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal until his retirement in October 2024. He's written this column for over forty years, largely just to get it out of his system. A Criminal Waste of Space won Best Column in California in 2019 from the California Newspaper Publishers Association (CNPA). His last book, Lawyers, Gubs, and Monkeys, can be obtained through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Vandeplas Publishing. He can be contacted at heybeds@outlook.com.