Lawyers Journal

An amicus brief co-authored by Massachusetts Bar Association Health Law Section Council member Lorianne Sainsbury-Wong was mentioned in the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark health care decision on the Affordable Care Act. The constitutionality of the act was upheld in a 5-4 decision on June 28, ruling that individuals who fail to obtain insurance must pay a tax penalty beginning in 2014.

Massachusetts Bar Association President Richard P. Campbell oversaw a productive association year with regard to his established priorities. Since last September, Campbell assembled a task force to analyze the Massachusetts law economy; launched a high profile awareness campaign for adequate court funding and inserted the Massachusetts bar into discussions surrounding the state's Gateway Cities.

Martha Rush O'Mara, of the Law Office of Martha Rush O'Mara in Melrose and Christopher P. Sullivan, partner of Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi LLP in Boston, will join the returning MBA officer slate as leaders for the 2012-13 year.

Over the past 12 months or more, we have been soundly tested as a profession. Just bring to mind some of the problems that have manifested over that timeframe:

• The judiciary, so starved of financial support, closed some courts, suspended normal operating hours in other courts such that ordinary citizens could not get their business done when they rightly expected to find the courts open (e.g., the lunch hour), and lost some of our most experience trial judges to early retirement as they chose to avoid the indignities of continued service to the commonwealth without adequate financial support.
• Predator businesses like "Notarios," holding themselves out as experts in law, fed off the ignorance of unsophisticated clients in Gateway Cities like Lawrence, New Bedford, Brockton and Springfield, causing great damage to them.
• The nine in-state and seven area law schools, like a ruptured gushing watermain converting an otherwise valuable resource into a costly problem, kept spilling more than 1,500 unemployed and unemployable newly minted graduates into the commonwealth's law economy with little regard to the impact of their actions on those new graduates or on our citizens and practicing lawyers.
• Hapless and hopeless, many newly admitted lawyers "hung a shingle" without any practical experience or skills, thereby choosing to experiment on unsuspecting clients, opposing counsel, and the courts.