Justice Stanley Sklar announced that the judges, in protest over the denial of pay raises, will cancel Law Day.  According to the  New York Law Journal newsbrief,

To express their dismay over stalled efforts to win a pay raise, Manhattan’s 55 Supreme Court justices have canceled the Law Day ceremony they customarily host on May 1. In a statement yesterday, Justice Stanley L. Sklar, president of the Board of Justices of New York County, said “the judges cannot go forward with developing their own ceremonies this year when the judges have been denied justice.” Having gone more than nine years without a raise, Justice Sklar wrote, “it is clear” that judges working in New York City have the lowest salaries of “any judges in the United States” when adjusted for the cost of living. “Many of us have borrowed from our pension plans to pay for college tuition or other expenses,” he added. In February, Chief Judge Judith S. Kaye likewise decided not to give her annual State of the Judiciary address until the governor and the Legislature ended the “judiciary’s intolerable grief” by enacting a raise for the state’s 1,300 judges.

So this begs the question, who cares?  I know, it’s the symbolism, but does anyone else get the feeling that some in Albany are shrugging their shoulders, while others are just chuckling at this?

One has to wonder, do the judges think that canceling Law Day is an effective way to protest or garner support for their cause?  If so, they have been away from the trenches for far too long.  Maybe there’s some merit to the idea that no one should be able to sit on the bench for more than 10 years so they don’t lose touch with the real world.

For me, Justice Sklar’s protest came at a really bad time.  As I was talking to a civil associate at my office, a call came in from a civil Supreme judge’s chambers demanding that someone get their butt downtown to be physically present for a submission date on a motion.  But why, I foolishly asked, if the motion was already submitted, would they need a warm body.  There was no oral argument.  In fact, the motion was already decided by a prior decision, and this was a mere formality (the law loves its formalities).  The answer came back clear as a bell:  Because the judge says so.

So someone showed, the case was called and marked submitted, and someone left, having done nothing but given $4 to the charity we call the subway and wasted 2 hours of their life and the firm’s time and client’s money.

The juxtaposition of the judiciary’s foot-stamping, with their total refusal to understand and appreciate the pointless, wasteful and needless burdens they place on lawyers, makes it very hard to feel sorry for them. 

I’ve made this point before, and I’ll make it again.  Judges, if you want lawyers to join with you in your quest for an appropriate increase in judicial salary, then stop treating the bar like dirt.  We work for a living too.  Our clients work for a living too.  It’s not all about you. 

You squander our time like it’s worthless, demanding that we jump at your whim and spend hour upon hour sitting around your courtroom for your convenience, without the slightest concern for the impact on our livelihoods.  And then you cry that we don’t care enough about you?  Give me a break.

Respect is a two way street.  You want it?  Then give it.  You want us to be concerned that you have to dig into your pensions to pay for college tuition?  Do you think that our kids go to college for free?  You work hard?  Are we sitting in your courtroom eating bon bons?

I can appreciate that there are limits to what the judiciary can do to make its point, given that it will never do what is really necessary to create the constitutional crisis that will force the issue.  Whether you should is another story.  But for crying out loud, stop treating the lawyers like serfs, who exist only to “please the court” under pain of their clients’ suffering, and then expect us to care deeply for your plight.

Is this getting through to anyone?

H/T Andrew Lavoott Bluestone at New York Attorney Malpractice Blog.