When I started work at the law firm of Bernstein and Bernstein (not Sam), attorneys did their legal research in the law library, using statute books, case books, and digests that were updated annually by means of things called “pocket parts” stuck in a slot in the back of a particular book. Each year, you pulled out the old pocket part, threw it away, and stuck in the new one. Whole volumes could get superseded by new volumes. A clerk could keep very busy trying to make sense of the various paper systems. Many didn’t.
With internet research, those days are now gone, though most of the old volumes remain in the library. Gives the joint a touch of class, at best, and no one will open the books to see that that the pocket parts are dated 2009. Can’t be sold at any price and can’t be given away-no one will take them.
The B&B library did have one timeless item, which I have never seen anywhere else, during a long and colorful career. I refer to the 1977 Wayne County Lawyer Pictorial Register, put out by the Detroit Bar Association. The book came out before I was licensed (thank God), but it does contain pictures of many lawyers and judges I had cases with over the years. It is like looking at an old high school yearbook, where everyone is a senior.
I know this book is rare. I haven’t even seen it in the Detroit Bar Association archive, such as it is. That is a story for another time. The book, Wicked Detroit, has a reference to a statement issued by the Detroit Bar Association in 1824. The current DBA prides itself as being the country’s second-oldest bar association, founded in 1834. I don’t know what documentation may support that assertion. How the archive of the organization is now comprised of a couple of bankers’ boxes, a whiteboard, and a half shelf of the organization’s magazine, from 1946 forward, defies understanding. It has certainly defied my attempts to find an explanation.
In the late 70s, the DBA membership was overwhelmingly white male. However, 70s styles for white males are in evidence, with the longer hair and 1977 Directory mutton chop sideburns affected by some of the younger lawyers. One of the more restrained portraits is that of Kaye Tertzag, then a mere 8 years out of law school. I first met him in 1987 when he became the first downriver lawyer to be appointed to the Wayne County Circuit Court Bench. Back when the DBA picture was taken, “Mr. Tertzag” might have still been practicing law at night after working his day job as a teacher at River Rouge High School. He stepped down from the bench in 2004 to become one of the first, and always one of the best, facilitators.
Though I never remember Judge Tertzag with a mustache or hair quite that long, the DBA portrait is a very good one. That can’t be said for all of the entries in the Register. I would often show new B&B employees the 1977 pictures of their bosses, and then told them to visualize those pictures when called into the bosses’ office. I was told it helped-on occasion.
Back to Judge Tertzag for a moment. The Tertzag Tribute Dinner (popularly known as the Purple Sport Coat Dinner), which honored the legacy of Judge Terztag, started in 2010. I had the honor to be on the committee that started the event, and I served as emcee for most of the award banquets. The last event was held in February 2020, and the COVID lockdown started less than a month later. There hasn’t been a Purple Sport Coat event since. The role of the committee had diminished in the years leading up to the pandemic, so I don’t know if the event will return in February of 2024. We’ll see. If nothing happens, I do have a cunning plan of my own.
The reason I mention the 1977 Register here is that I had occasion to return to the B&B office in August 2023 to do a little research for a profile of attorney Daniel P. Cassidy I was writing for the Detroit Lawyer Magazine. It will appear in the September 2023 issue. Mr. Cassidy, whose picture is shown here, became a lawyer in 1903, a time when there was no bar exam. Mr. Cassidy practiced until the age of 100, and I had the honor of meeting him when I was a baby lawyer. I didn’t know how long he had been practicing or his age when I met him. Another thing I learned from the 1977 DBA Register.
An amazing man.
Don’t cast away your heritage, folks. It’s important.
I’ll end this with a few lines from the Simon and Garfunkel song, Bookends. The metaphor is not perfect for lawyers (“A time of innocence”, but all the same, it works enough for me.
“Time it was
And what a time it was
It was a time of innocence
A time of confidences
Long ago, it must be
I have a photograph
Preserve your memories
They’re all that’s left you”
