by Liz Daube
Staff Writer
Martin Sack’s law office doesn’t use computers.
“My 12-year-old granddaughter came in and asked, ‘What is that?’ ” said Sack, pointing to two typewriters at the reception desk. Telephones make up the rest of the office technology.
“I am computer ignorant,” he explained.
The Jacksonville native and attorney recently celebrated 50 years of Florida Bar membership. Sack, along with 98 other attorneys, will be honored for his 50th anniversary at the Florida Bar’s 2006 annual convention this week in Boca Raton.
Those 50 years have brought a lot of changes to the law profession, according to Sack.
“When I first started practicing, there were probably less than 500 lawyers in Jacksonville,” he said. “Now, there are more than 3,000. A big firm was five lawyers. A huge firm was maybe 10 lawyers. Now, they have multiple branches in different cities and 100 or more in a big firm.”
Rapid growth is one of many changes Sack said he’s seen in the law profession. His role as a multi-faceted, sole practitioner used to be the norm, Sack said. While he enjoys working on his own, doing a variety of work and developing personal relationships with clients, Sack said general practice lawyers have become “a dying breed.”
“The practice has become more complex and highly specialized,” said Sack. “Things were a lot simpler then (when he started in 1956). Everyone was general practice.”
Greater complexity has made board certification more popular, Sack said – and it’s made lawyers’ work more lucrative.
Sack said the difficulty of sorting through the changing legal system means lawyers can charge more. A typical minimum hourly fee was $25 in the late 1950s, he said, but “today it ranges between $200-$400.” Sack said the top graduate of his 1956 class at the University of Florida’s law school was proud to land a position paying $250 a month.
Inflation may explain some of the difference between that salary and, say, the annual $100,000 starting salary for first-year Holland & Knight associates. Sack added that his generation was raised during the Great Depression, when “nobody had any money.”
Lawyers’ services may be more in demand, as well. Sack said people sue each other “at the drop of a hat” now, and awards for personal injury cases have “skyrocketed.”
“There’s a whole lot of negligence going on out there,” said Sack. “The products and the services have become so much more sophisticated and complex ... which leads to not doing them correctly.”
Sack said he has seen other “revolutionary” changes affect both the practice of law and Jacksonville’s social landscape.
He entered law school because he was from a “legal family” and wanted to delay getting drafted into the Korean War. When he graduated in 1956, he was drafted anyway – shortly after marrying his wife, Carol, and taking the Bar exam. He found out that he passed in a pup tent at Fort Knox.
When Sack returned to Jacksonville and began practicing in 1958, segregation was still a regular part of life. The office he rents in Riverside today actually used to be the “colored waiting room” for a doctor’s office. He said the Jacksonville Bar Association didn’t admit black lawyers then.
Sack said his college roommate fought for equal voting rights when “people were being shot for doing that.” He said judges Bryan Simpson and Gerald Tjoflat handed down decisions that required them to have bodyguards. Ultimately, legal decisions marked the official end of segregation, Sack said.
“It was scary. There were riots in the street,” he said. “Brown v. The Board of Education was the most influential decision that’s ever come out of the Supreme Court. It changed the whole social fabric of America.”
The Brown decision had a “snowball effect” on other causes, like women’s rights, Sack said. His graduating law school class had only two women in it, he said, but now women make up more than half of all law students.
The only major, negative change Sack said he’s witnessed in the last 50 years is legal advertising. It used to be banned by The Florida Bar, but now it’s allowed with restrictions. Florida has the strictest advertising regulations in the United States, but Sack said he still doesn’t like it.
“I find it despicable and unprofessional, but it’s here to stay,” he said.
Ethics violations seem more common as well, Sack said. But he thinks more widespread press attention and the rapid growth of the profession may be part of the cause.
“You’ve got to have bad apples with numbers like that,” he said, adding that the legal community’s growth has changed its nature. “(When I started practicing,) you knew everybody. Their word was their bond. Now you need a written agreement and a court order to implement it.”
Attorney style has evolved over the years, too. Sack said when he used to visit his father at the old courthouse location (where the tax collector’s office is now), lawyers always wore suits and ties, despite the lack of air conditioning. They used fans to cool off and “papers were blowing everywhere.”
“You could smoke in the judge’s chambers. There were ashtrays on the table,” said Sack. “There was no such thing as casual Friday. A lot of lawyers even wore hats.”
Other Jacksonville attorneys recognized for their 50 years of Bar membership this year include William H. Grant, Frederick J. Simpson, Thomas B. Slade III and John F. Corrigan.