THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, October 3, 1994 TAG: 9410010032
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MARC DAVIS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 171 lines
LOWELL A. STANLEY knew he was far from home when the cellular phone stopped working.
He had shlepped the thing 2,000 miles from Norfolk to Wyoming. It was the umbilical cord to his wife, his young daughter, his law office, his life.
But at Thunderhead Ranch, it was as useless as a bucket of mud at the Norfolk Yacht and Country Club.
For the entire month of August, the phone lay dormant. Stanley was far, far away, a mile high in the Rockies, three hours from nowhere.
For that month, Stanley would lead a monastic life, sharing a dorm room in a converted barn. He would live, learn, eat and sleep with 49 other lawyers from around the country. They would sing around campfires, re-enact emotional moments in their lives, practice obscure legal rituals.
They would take turns washing toilets, for crying out loud.
But it would be worth it. Gerry Spence, one of the most famous trial lawyers in America - the man with the buckskin jackets and long gray hair on Court TV, defender of Imelda Marcos - had picked these 50 lawyers for the first session of his new Trial Lawyer's College.
To make it work, Spence would sequester the 50 on his hard-scrabble ranch, one hour down a dusty dirt road from Dubois, Wyo., population 895.
There would be no TVs, no malls, no newspapers or judges or families to distract them.
And no cellular phones, either, as Stanley learned. Thunderhead Ranch was far, far out of radio range.
``Not only were we in Wyoming,'' Stanley recalled, ``we were in Nowhere, Wyoming.''
It was an honor, just the same. Spence had chosen the students - most of them lawyers in their 30s and 40s - from among 435 applicants. They were not necessarily the richest lawyers in their hometowns, or the most famous. That wasn't the point.
``I was looking for people who cared about people,'' Spence said last week. ``I wasn't interested in prominent lawyers. I'm not going to teach those kind of lawyers a god-damn thing.''
In his brochure, Spence warned applicants: ``We're not interested in your grade average. We don't care where you went to law school. We don't care what clubs you belong to or what your golf handicap may be. We are not interested in your financial or social successes. We don't care about how many cases you've won or the honors you've received.''
One more thing: ``If you expect luxury and high-style living, don't come.''
The goal, Spence said, was to turn these lawyers back into people, to purge all the junk they had picked up in law school.
``By the time they get through law school,'' Spence said in an interview last week, ``they are pretty well defeated as a person. They have forgotten how to feel. The idea of justice has been stomped out of them. . . .
``What they need to do is not think like lawyers. That's the problem with the legal profession. They have to think like human beings.''
Lowell Stanley liked what he heard.
At 45, he had built up a small but respectable solo practice in Norfolk, specializing in personal injury cases. He is most famous locally for his TV ads hawking the ``CASH Line.'' And Spence was his idol.
He was determined to make the cut.
``I started out as a lawyer for a big law firm representing insurance companies and corporations,'' Stanley wrote in his application. ``I hated it. I left in less than a year. . . .
``I have no grand story or trauma. I may be considered boring. I am proud to be a lawyer. I want to be a better lawyer. I see injustice, and I fight for people who have sadness and tragedy and hurt in their lives. I beg you to please let me come to your College so I can be better for them.''
The acceptance letter came a few weeks later. It was signed, ``Love, Gerry Spence.''
Stanley was floored.
``I don't even know this guy,'' Stanley said. ``Most lawyers write each other, `With warmest personal regards.' ''
It was just the first surprise.
There is no easy way to get to Wyoming.
It took Lowell Stanley two days: Norfolk to Cincinnati, to Salt Lake City, to Jackson Hole, Wyo. Then three hours waiting in an airport. Then riding a bus three hours to the ranch.
Finally, dinner was served. The group that would stay together one full month had arrived.
Students and faculty ate dinner that night at wooden picnic-style tables and benches.
It was a start.
For the first three days, Spence put the lawyers through a series of odd exercises. He called them ``psychodramas.'' Students acted out emotional moments of their lives. Some cried.
That broke the ice.
Another time, Spence ordered the students out of bed at 5 a.m., then told them to find a spot in the woods, alone, and watch the sun rise in silence. Later, they ate breakfast together, still in silence. At 9 a.m., they talked over the experience.
Another time, Spence asked them to paint pictures. ``A lawyer must show the jury his emotions,'' Spence said. Stanley broke a brush painting angry black swirls. He called it ``Black Hole.''
``Spence loved it,'' Stanley recalled. ``It showed my rage.''
Another time, Spence asked the lawyers to recite their favorite poems. Stanley read an obscure selection by Robert Penn Warren called ``There's a Grandfather's Clock in the Hall.''
Not everyone loved the odd assignments.
``Psychodrama isn't natural to me,'' one lawyer wrote in the college's weekly newsletter. ``I was trained to be objective and unaffected in law school. A couple of days haven't changed that. I felt uncomfortable physically hugging a stranger (my spouse and I don't even hug in public).''
Yet there was method in the madness, Spence said.
``We wanted to introduce the individual to his own unique self, to discover the person, to aid them in becoming people,'' Spence said.
Lowell Stanley understood.
``In law school,'' he said, ``we are taught not to be human beings. We are taught to speak legalese. . . . All law schools train you to leave your humanity behind.''
At the ranch, there were also more practical exercises: days and days of mock trials and courtroom role-playing. For the faculty, Spence assembled a virtual Who's Who of American Trial Lawyers.
Among the faculty were Howard Weitzman, attorney to Michael Jackson and former attorney to O.J. Simpson; Joe Jamail, who won $10 billion in the Pennzoil vs. Texaco case; Richard ``Racehorse'' Haynes, who defended T. Cullen Davis in Texas; Rikki Kleiman, attorney to fugitive 1960s radical Katherine Anne Powers; and Morris Dees, chief trial counsel for the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Classes were held in converted barns and lofts. Each courtroom was named for famous Indians: the Chief Joseph Courtroom, the Sacajawea Courtroom, and others.
Spence emphasized story-telling techniques. The ``young warriors'' practiced it over and over. Then they attacked the courtroom from every angle: as jurors, as judges, as defense attorneys, as prosecutors, as victims.
On participant called it ``a legal Woodstock,'' where nobody was sure what would come next.
In the final days, the students tried the most famous defendant of all, O.J. Simpson. They took turns playing different parts. In four trials, O.J. was convicted only once. The others ended with hung juries.
And then, tearfully, the group broke up and scattered for home.
Today, Stanley dresses casual. He wears a blue polo shirt to the office. He saves the jacket and tie for court.
That's one change Stanley brought back from Wyoming.
``Clients feel more comfortable with me now,'' he says. ``They're not dressed in suits and ties. They're dressed like real people.''
But that's just the superficial change. Inside, Stanley says, is the real change.
``It was one of the most fantastic experiences of my life,'' he says. ``This makes you a better lawyer because it make you feel. Lawyers are taught to be logical and cogent and to write in words no one understands, but not to feel.''
Spence, too, calls the college a success.
He recalls the Norfolk attorney as ``a powerful man, a powerful personality. . . . He became a favorite of many of the people there. He was called on in many situations. He became probably one of the more outstanding people in the school. He became a leader.''
Spence said he will repeat the school next summer, and the summer after, as long as he can afford it. He hopes to find sponsors.
``It was a miracle,'' Spence recalled. ``I saw 50 lives transformed there. I saw people who didn't know how to try a case leave knowing how to try a case. . . . I saw people who had forgotten how to care leave full of compassion and love for the human race again.
``It was just a total, unbelievable miracle.'' ILLUSTRATION: SAM HUNDLEY/Staff [Illustration]
LOWELL STANLEY
Local lawyer Lowell Stanley, left, and legal guru Gerry Spence
express their feelings.
LOWELL A. STANLEY
The Trial Lawyer's College is located on Gerry Spence's ranch, near
Dubois Wyom., population 895.
KEYWORDS: LAWYERS ATTORNEYS RETREAT CAMP by CNB