- Series
- Law in the news
- Air Date
- 1969-03-04
- Duration
- 00:05:05
- Episode Description
- This program focuses on a book called "The Trouble With Lawyers."
- Series Description
- This series focuses on current news stories that relate to the law.
- Subject(s)
- Creator(s)
- University of Michigan (Producer)
- Contributors
- Julin, Joseph R. (Speaker)
- Genre(s)
- Geographic Region(s)
- regions
- Time Period
- 1961-1970
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The National Education already own network presents a law in the news with Professor
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Joseph R. Julan associate dean of the University of Michigan Law School
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Simon and Schuster has recently published a book authored by Marie tide bloom.
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The title The trouble with lawyers. A recent review of that
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book and I perhaps should immediately suggest the source of
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the review is a review by a lawyer printed in the Chicago Bar
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Association legal journal. A recent review of that book begins as
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follows. Mary Ty Bloom a non-lawyer freelance professional
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writer but only proclaims at the outset that he intends to show how the
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American middle class is victimized by the American legal profession.
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He then proceeds to update old material and piece together a rerun of his old magazine
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articles sorted out under chapter headings to make it appear he has written a book.
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Now whenever I see a review of such a book whenever I see a les
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authored article How to avoid probate of the like it brings
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to mind a colleague of mine Richard Wellman Professor Wellman for a number of years
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has been developing together with others a new uniform
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probate code. Recently in the National Observer there was a headline lawyers
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designing the code to speed probate a Will Dick Wellman is with me now
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and I'd like to simply put the question Dick. When is your new
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law going to affect the man on the street.
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A great deal will depend upon how badly the man in the street wants this law
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to be in effect and how much he can communicate to his
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state legislature tors his sense of urgency and of desire
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for this new law. Our drafts should be approved by the
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national organization hopefully this July. But after that has occurred
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it depends upon the political machinery in each of the states.
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And as to how quickly that can be mobilized to support this and to get it
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into an act meant before I can relate tell you. When it all hit the
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man in the street.
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The man on the street in this sense really doesn't have much of a lobby but there is an
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organization which we're all aware the American Bar Association there are
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other organizations of lawyers are these organizations prepared to lobby for your
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reform.
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I think the answer to that is that they are becoming
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prepared to lobby for it I would not say that any organization has yet gone on
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record as firmly in favor of this one of the problems is that this
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code is over 300 pages of fairly intricate
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provisions and the lawyers as is their custom in their training want to know what it
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is they're supporting before they would support it. And it takes a lot of time to
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get the information of the detail and of the
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implications of the detail across two organizations. But the lawyer
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organizations that have looked at this carefully and their spokesman who are
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reflective I think of the wider opinion once it's triggered have indicated support for
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this. If you had 45 seconds what would you tell a layman about this code so that he would
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support it. Though I would say to him that this code would make it
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possible in the long run for him to cease worrying about probate.
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This code is designed to tell the average person that his
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estate will pass at death by the law as well as he could arrange
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to have it passed by will or by will substitute and that there would be no
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cost delay or other unfairness or
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outrageous interference with the passage of that property at his death. I
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think this is a cause worth supporting.
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Is it likely that the layman if the POWs drafted
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supported by the Commissioners on uniform state laws is enacted. Is it likely that the
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layman won't have to have a will anymore.
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Well if he wants to call himself average and if he is truly average the answer is he needn't have a
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will. It's freely available to him however to make a will and a great number of people
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still will have reasons for wills.
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I take it you would add one caveat. The one individual who can
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advise an individual as to whether he needs or does not need a will now or under any
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uniform law as your counsellor.
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This is right you need someone with the kind of broad information and technical information that a
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lawyer has to answer that question.
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I've been talking with Professor Richard Wellman of the University of Michigan Law School
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Professor Joseph R. Julan associate dean of the University of Michigan Law School
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as represented law in the news recorded by the University of Michigan
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Broadcasting Service. This is the national educational radio
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network.
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