L 9004 The Idaho State Bar is organized in conformity to and functions under, statutes of the State of Idaho, found as Chapter 211, Session Laws of 1923, and Chapters 89 and 90, Session Laws of 1925. Rules for Admission of Attorneys, Conduct of Attorneys, Disciplinary Proceedings, and General Rules, as adopted by the Board of Commissioners and approved by the Supreme Court of Idaho, are published in pamphlet form and may be had upon application to the secretary. COMMISSIONERS OF THE IDAHO STATE BAR JOHN C. RICE, Caldwell, Western Division.. ROBT. D. LEEPER, Lewiston, Northern Division. C. H. POTTS, Coeur d'Alene, Northern Division.. OFFICERS OF THE IDAHO STATE BAR JOHN C. RICE, Caldwell, President.. ROBT. D. LEEPER, Lewiston, President.. FRANK MARTIN, Boise, President.. A. L. MERRILL, Boise, President.. SAM S. GRIFFIN, Boise, Secretary.. COMMITTEE ON LEGISLATION 1926 B. W. Oppenheim, Boise, Chairman. 1927 Jess Hawley, Boise, Chairman. OFFICES OF THE COMMISSION 1923-25 1923-25 1923-26 1925-27 1925-28 .1926-29 1927-30 1923-25 1925-26 1926-27 1927-28 1923 ANNOUNCEMENTS Attorney's License Fee-$5.00, payable annually prior to July 1, to the State Treasurer, Boise, Idaho. Meetings of the Bar-The Western and Eastern Divisions will hold Division meetings in 1928 at times and places to be fixed, respectively, by Commissioners Hawley and Merrill. Annual meeting of the Idaho State Bar will be held in the Northern Division in 1928, at a time to be announced later. An election of a commissioner for the Eastern Division will be held in 1928. OF THE IDAHO STATE BAR POCATELLO, IDAHO, JULY 19-20, FIRST SESSION JULY 19th, 1926 PRESIDENT LEEPER: The convention. will be in order. I will now ask Reverend Sloan of the Congregational Church of this City to make the invocation. REVEREND SLOAN: Our Father in Heaven, we recognize that thou blesseth all things and all people with that unchanging love, and we who strive to govern society through laws look to thee for. guidance that justice may prevail. Bless this convention to the end that they may find righteousness and right in all of their proceedings. We ask it in the Master's name. Amen. (The Nation's flag was brought in by color-bearer in uniform.) PRESIDENT LEEPER: We will now arise and salute the colors. (Assemblage arises and salutes the colors.) PRESIDENT LEEPER: I will now call on the Honorable Ben Ross, Mayor of the City of Pocatello, to make an address of welcome. MR. ROSS: Mr. President. PRESIDENT LEEPER: Mr. Ross. MR. ROSS: And ladies and gentlemen: On behalf of the City of Pocatello, I want to welcome the lawyers in convention assembled here, because you are the men who laid the foundation of this country. I appreciate the fact, and you will agree with me, that all of our great documents were written and drawn by members of the bar. The man who wrote the Declaration of Independence was a lawyer. For that reason we welcome you to the City of Pocatello. We want you to see the natural beauties of this city and of this country. I told your Chairman,—or Mr. Merrill, here, that I wouldn't talk to you long. One of the men in the room here said to me, "Ben, we don't want you to attempt any of your oratory on us here." He said, "You are all right when it comes to talking to hayseeds and farmers, but you can't get by talking to learned men," so I said, "Well, I won't attempt to make a speech this morning." He said, "Just tell the lawyers here you are glad they are in Pocatello." CHIEF JUSTICE LEE: He wasn't speaking truthfully. MR. ROSS: He said, "Just tell them we want them to see what you have here in the city," and we do. We are having an Indian Sun Dance just below town at the present time. That is something we haven't had for the last three or four years. For some reason the late Indian Agent prohibited the Indians from holding the Sun Dance. He said that it carried them back to the natural state of the Indians. He wanted them to progress and to think of the conditions of this day and age, so he wouldn't allow them to hold this dance. But it is a wonderful sight, and is only a few miles out of the city, and we would like to have the attorneys and lawyers from the various sections of, the state make an effort to see this wonderful sight. It is well worth it. We have another great institution, and that is the Kraft Cheese Plant. There are only three such institutions in the world, Chicago, New York and Pocatello. We want you gentlemen to go out and see Mr. Kraft make cheese, and we want you to carry this word back to the people, because after all the foundation, I have said this so many times,-after all the foundation of every industry is advertising, and you boys wouldn't be here today if it were not for the farmers or the farms. We want you to carry this word back to the various communities that it is a fact that Mr. Kraft can't get enough raw "product, that the sale of his product is unlimited, that he called his salesmen in from the European countries because he couldn't get enough raw material from the farm to make the finished product to be sent out, so the dairy business in this state is unlimited. When they tell you that the dairy business can't grow, they are telling you something that is not so. There is another thing we want to say: In the past, there is a gentleman sitting right here who when he came to Pocatello last March took a bath, said the water was so muddy that he thought Pocatello ought to do something with its water supply. We have the greatest well in the United States. That is quite a broad statement. (Applause.) JUDGE AILSHIE: I might suggest that it was muddy after he took his bath. MR. ROSS: We started our pump last Saturday, and we are pumping now 1050 gallons per minute out of the well, which is eighty feet deep, and we can't lower the water in the well. We believe we have a well that will yield three million gallons a day. We have water to take care of a city of two hundred thousand people. If for some reason Pocatello should grow to a city of that size, it would be jusi a matter of putting down more wells. We want you boys to go out and see it. It would be worth your while to see that water flowing out of the ground. It is one of our scenic beauties. I told you that I wouldn't make a speech. I just want to say one more word, and that is about service. We are living today in a day of service. Mac is smiling over there. He is saying to himself, "You think that lawyers don't give service." The average lawyer does figure on giving service. I am not so very old, but I can remember when I went into a store to buy its merchandise, a drygoods store for instance, and the merchant laid out his wares on the counter that I was contemplating purchasing, and a pair of gloves, for instance, he said the price was $1.50. I immediately offered him $1.25, and the rest of the people did the same thing. They didn't have one price. They didn't figure on giving service. That is only twenty or twentyfive years back. That condition existed over the whole country, but now the service clubs are educating the people, and I might say that it might be necessary to educate the lawyers. It is only a few years ago that doctors looked only after people who were sick; they didn't figure on giving service to people who were well. Now the doctors have a different point of view. Now, the lawyers should aim to keep people out of trouble, and I believe you boys are fast learning, and fast adopting those principles, because you are going along with the times, and appreciate the fact that you must give service, which is the greatest thing in the world. You know, H. E., I told you I wouldn't make a speech, when you asked me not to do it, but I just keep on talking. I want to say that we are all glad that you are here, and the city is yours. We have had a great many conventions here, and when the W. C. T. U. met here some time ago, I said to them, "Ladies, we are going to throw the keys to the city down a well, and you can do anything you want to do. I doesn't make any difference what you do.” Now, I'm going to just chance you lawyers once. I am going to say to you lawyers, that figuratively speaking we are going to throw the keys in the well. If you park your car on the sidewalk, it will be all right. If the policeman should try to arrest you, just tell them, "I'm a lawyer." (Applause.) PRESIDENT LEEPER: On behalf of the Bar, Mayor Ross, I thank you for your cordial words, and we will try to keep order as best a group of this kind may be able. I don't know that we will deplete your water supply very seriously. Ladies and Gentlemen: It is customary and proper that your retiring President should, in his annual address, cast up for your consideration the outstanding events of his administration. This will be particularly important this year, because this is the first time when we are capable of viewing in retrospect any considerable period of operation under the Idaho State Bar Commission Act. As you know, the original act creating this commission was passed in 1923 and it constituted a novel experiment in the control of a professional group. Theretofore, in Idaho and elsewhere, the only organizations which attempted control of the professional conduct of attorneys at law were purely voluntary, with no substantial power and largely ineffective in so far as discipline was concerned. The then voluntary association in Idaho, adopting the premise that practice of the law is one affected with such public interest as to warrant the interposition of the police power of the state, and recognizing the feebleness of its own powers and its impotency in the face of manifest abuses by unworthy practitioners, boldly decided to strike out into the unknown and uncharted seas of legislative police control of all lawyers in the state of Idaho, and the 1923 act was the result. Briefly, this act declared the public interest attached to the profession, provided for a commission to be elected by the members to which it delegates full power to admit, and license to practice, to hear and determine disciplinary matters, to provide and enforce codes of ethics and to hold bar meetings, all subject to revision in the Supreme Court. The act also requires the payment of an annual license fee of five dollars, and makes it a crime to practice without a license. Pursuant to the act commissioners were elected in each district in the summer of 1923, the first board consisting of Hon. John C. Rice, Hon N. D. Jackson and myself. We met and organized in August of 1923, but as the experiment was new and untried, and the members of the commission were highly doubtful as to the constitutional extent of their powers, the board caused a test case to be filed in the form of an action by Mr. Jackson against Mr. Gallet, the State Auditor, for payment of his expense account. All questions were raised, and the matter rested in the Supreme Court undecided until the early months of 1925. During that time the commission could not function. In the meantime another legislature met in 1925 and the act was amended to meet with certain objections urged by the Supreme Court, which, however, finally approved the act. Therefore, it was not until the spring of 1925 that the commission was able to act. However, it immediately became active and in a series of meetings promulgated the rules which now constitute the working basis of the commission. We found a heavy task confronting, as we were treading unknown paths and had no precedents to go by. There were three general jurisdictions which had to be covered -admissions, discipline, and general bar government. In drafting our rules, we examined, compared and annotated the rules from every bar organization in the United States, and we believe that we achieved a simple, comprehensive plan of operation which is amply sufficient to cover our needs, protect the public, and which at the same time meets every legal requirement. These rules have been approved by the Supreme Court and have the force of law. We may well be proud that Idaho is a pioneer in this movement known as the integration of the bar, and that many other states now follow in our footsteps. But after we were organized and our rules adopted, our work had just begun. We found that the matter of admissions to practice |