From the Editor

By Peter Allen
     
      If amnesia is the media's greatest fault, then celebrating insipid anniversaries must be its second greatest. (And, not surprisingly, they're related. Celebrating a media-designated anniversary is often an ersatz history lesson.) But when Senior Editor Thomas Brom suggested we acknowledge the 25th anniversary of this magazine, he had something else in mind entirely: an opportunity to offer some perspective on the vast changes in the law-and our place in those changes. "I felt that the two topics-changes in the magazine and changes in the practice of law-were inseparable," Brom says, "and that our history reflected the recent history of California law. I suppose that is how it should be. Our intense identification with the subject of our work is a compliment to our staff and a benefit to our readers."
     
      Brom, who has worked at the magazine since it was a State Bar publication, assigned and edited many of the articles. Says Brom, "What pieces to include seemed obvious: an 'inside baseball' piece about the magazine; the State Bar and its doomed attempt to protect its guild status; the battle for the soul of the state Supreme Court; legal technology and the practice of law changing each other; and Hollywood discovering lawyers as the latest chapter in its endless search for heroes and villains. The articles fit together: productivity is driven by tech, consolidation is driven by profits per partner, and the courts bending with the dramatic shift in the state's politics. It's gone from left to right, right to left, and back again in 25 years. You can't separate practice from the personal computer and high-speed data transmission, and you can't separate the shift in the courts from four consecutive terms of popularly elected Republican governors.
     
      "As for me," Brom continues, "I still remember editing features at the State Bar with scissors and Scotch tape. There was just one Wang computer terminal for the entire magazine, and it had to be shared with production and the art director. The pace of production, as well as of information flow, seems glacial in comparison to today."
     
      One other thing that has changed since California Lawyer's State Bar days is the recognition we receive from other journalists. Legal beat reporters from major publications have told me they rely on us for story ideas to pitch to their editors. In the 7 years the magazine was at the State Bar, it won one award (for best new publication) from the Western Publications Association, which judges the hundreds of magazines produced west of the Mississippi. Since our acquisition by the Daily Journal Corp. 18 years ago-and beginning with Editor Ray Reynolds-California Lawyer has won another 52 awards for both editorial and artistic excellence.
     
      Note: All the quotes in the Time Capsules scattered through this issue came from the pages of earlier California Lawyers.
     

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