Missouri Bar promotes educational services

"No amount of charters, direct primaries, or short ballots will make a democracy out of an illiterate people." Walter Lippmann (18891974), a journalist, in Chapter 9 of "A Preface to Politics" (1914).

The laws of this country and our justice system are not meant to be some mysterious code that only the inner sanctum can take advantage of and yet, without basic legal literacy, they might as well be in Chinese.

Being legally literate means understanding your rights and responsibilities, whether in a business environment or at home in your personal life. Legal literacy includes a decent understanding of our legal system and its role as one of the three branches of government.

Don't know much about probate? You may think that's OK, but your lack of legal literacy in that one area alone might cause you to do something you didn't mean to do and could cost your heirs thousands and thousands of dollars.

Not sure about your company's responsibility to ensure that the office environment isn't one that promotes or accepts sexual harassment or discrimination of any sort? You may survive for a while being legally illiterate, but you're taking a risk. Legal literacy is every bit as important as computer literacy, maybe even more important.

Even though it can be difficult getting through all the work you have in any particular day, some things are so important that neglecting them can cost you money or lead to greater problems. Becoming legally literate is one of those things.

Each year on May 1, lawyers remind the public about Law Day, a day set aside since 1958 to appreciate the role of law in our lives. I won't ask you to get all misty-eyed about Law Day and to leap out of your seats and head to the nearest library to check out books about the law. I do hope, however, that you can make the time to read through the pages of this Law Day supplement.

Learning about the laws that make our family and business environments safe and orderly can not only be a fulfilling experience, but it can save you a lot of trouble.

The Missouri Bar can, and does, help thousands of Missourians who have questions about the law. Each month, more than 6,000 people visit the bar's Web site, www.mobar.org and check through the wide array of resources the bar provides the public online brochures about many different aspects of law, information about the lawyer/client relationship and links to hundreds of other Web sites with a legal or governmental focus.

Later this fall as we near the general elections, The Missouri Bar and the Bar Association of Metropolitan St. Louis will be providing voters with the information they need to cast an informed ballot in the judicial retention elections.

All merit-selected judges who will be running for new terms on the bench are being evaluated by the lawyers who have direct experience of them.

About 150,000 copies of those evaluations will be distributed throughout the state. The results will also be on the bar's Web site.

You can use your computer to link to every resource available from The Missouri Bar. It will take a basic level of computer literacy.

If you can move comfortably through the ongoing technological revolution, you surely have the ability to carry on the revolution in governing that started more than 200 years ago. It all starts with legal literacy.

If you belong to a civic or fraternal group, the bar's speaker's bureau would be glad to make arrangements for a lawyer to speak to your group about almost any area of law.

Call The Missouri Bar at 573-635-4128 or e-mail your request to mobar@mobar.org, and we'll match your group's interests to a volunteer lawyer experienced in the area of law that concerns you.

Happy Law Day.

(Michael P. Gunn is president of the Missouri Bar Association.)