Here are excerpts of the Installation speech by NJAJ President Patricia M. Giordano, Esq.

I stand before you tonight as Exhibit A of you never know where your career will lead you.

The first and only classes I cut were evidence.

And I did so because my very close cousin had moved to Martha’s Vineyard. I was in Boston and a weekend  at the Vineyard seemed better than a Friday class in evidence.

Anyway, in cutting these classes, I reasoned with myself that I was never going to be a trial lawyer, so I didn’t need to worry about missing an evidence class. And truthfully, my grade reflected my lack of commitment to that subject.)

So, it should come as no surprise that when I graduated law school, I never considered that my career would include being elected president of an organization consisting of more than 2,600 trial lawyers.

But it has. And like those before me, as tonight approached, I couldn’t help but wonder what led me to this moment.

I come from a long line of talkers.

I swear my father sometimes spoke just to hear his own voice.

And in her later years, once the filters were off, my mom would accuse me of the same thing.

That aside, from my mom, I got grit. And also like my mom, I may bend, but I don’t break.

So, with that DNA in mind, a combination of verbosity and resilience – I can tell you the exact moment that led me to tonight.

It was Super Bowl Sunday,  January 31, 1993.

By then I had realized that litigation was more fun than the real estate work I was doing at a small insurance defense firm working on a variety of cases

All week NBC had been promoting its new “must see tv show,” debuting immediately after the Super Bowl.

That show was Homicide: Life on the Street. And it would go on to be one my favorite shows of all time.

Let me set this up for you – the first episode found Detective John Munch – not your most ambitious  detective – working a  cold case with no leads. And his partner, the older and wiser Detective Stanley Bolander – Big Man was on Munch’s back to solve the murder and used good old-fashioned guilt to motivate Munch to re-examine the case.

“Jenny Goode was murdered John; someone has to speak for her,” which I heard as “somebody has to speak for those who can’t speak for themselves.”

And that could be for any number of reasons – lack of ability, lack of power, lack of access, or as in Jenny Goode’s case, death.

In hindsight, I know why that line resonated with me. As many of you know, when I was four , my little sister Anne was born. Unfortunately, she was the victim of obstetrical malpractice. She lived for 34 years, but she never functioned beyond a two-month-old. And her entire life, someone  had to speak for her.

At first, it was my parents, and then after my dad died, my mother, and not too long after that, I too took on the role of her advocate.

I watched my mother devote much of her life to caring for my sister, I cried when my mother cried and when Anne died, I witnessed the terrible grief my mother experienced – which affected me profoundly.

As far back as I can remember – and I am going back to when I was a very little girl and seemed to soak up what was going on around me – I understood and  secretly worried about those less fortunate than me and I worried too about the turmoil America found itself in – the Vietnam War, the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, racial inequality, gender inequality, and the generational divide.

The poverty I saw when my Brownie troop delivered Thanksgiving baskets to families in Camden caused a visceral reaction in me that I was not able to shake.

And although I did not have the education or wisdom during those tender years to know what those experiences and feelings meant, I instinctively understood then – and now firmly believe that for America to live up to its promise, someone has to speak on behalf of the marginalized, someone has to speak on behalf of those who do not have a voice in our society.

Someone has to speak for those who can’t speak for themselves.

And since 2002, when I made the switch to plaintiffs’ work, that is how I have chosen to live my professional life – using my voice for those who either have none or have been denied one.

This is what we trial lawyers do every day – we advocate: we speak for those who can’t speak for themselves.

We tend to those who need our help.

 

And this should include not just our clients, but those colleagues who struggle to reach their full potential – including those who do not fit our traditional notions of power brokers.

This organization – like the New Jersey  judiciary and the New Jersey  state bar – is committed to promoting diversity, fairness and inclusion –to make everyone feel as though they belong in our legal community.

Let me give you just one compelling example:

In 1960, women made up only 3.5% of law students. In 1970, that percentage rose to 8.5. Today it is nearing 55%.

What does that mean?

It means that in most of our lifetimes, women will be the dominant group of attorneys – how that translates to trial lawyers is unknown, but as the number of women litigators rises, so will their power.

And the same can be said for lawyers of color – although the statistics show that their numbers are growing more slowly.

So, I ask you, how can we effectively uphold our pledge to nurture and encourage future leaders of NJAJ – and the bar – if we don’t acknowledge that within our lifetimes, those in our profession with whom we currently  associate power and privilege will no longer be the dominant group?

NJAJ is dedicated to giving all of us the tools to uplift those among us who need an ally.

And by that, I don’t mean telling someone what to do and I don’t mean mentoring,

 

I mean standing side by side with those not yet in positions of power – to be a  trusted teammate who uses his or her voice to convince the coach and other teammates to give someone who has not yet gained a position of power some playing time.

I am not advocating for the elimination from our ranks of those currently in power.

All I am asking is that we not only welcome people of all stripes to the party, but we ask them to dance as well.

So, let’s return to using your voice.

In the broader sense, using your voice also applies to this organization – Our more than 2,600 members  can’t go to Trenton every time we oppose or support a bill.

Instead, NJAJ is our voice in Trenton.

And NJAJ is our voice on other issues as well,  such as judicial vacancies and  attorney conducted voir dire.

I may be the person this year who gets to speak on NJAJ’s behalf, but I understand that I only get to do that because of the good will and reputation of this organization, built on the backs of thousands of trial lawyers – most of whom I will never know, the 61  former presidents who came before me, our incomparable Executive Director, Cornelius Larkin, our Director of Governmental Relations Emeritus Deborah Bozarth and the entire staff – past and present – of NJAJ.

It is my hope that this year you will come to me with your ideas and that together, we will make changes that are beneficial for our clients and for us as well as all of New Jersey’s  residents and consumers.

 

I also want to talk about the flip side of using your voice, and that is to lend someone your ear.

I’m no William Shakespeare so let me tell you what that means to me: to listen to what others have to say.

It is only through listening to you that I and NJAJ can help you.

So please feel free to reach out to me this year and I will lend you my ear and I assure you that when I talk, I will be using my voice for the good of all of us.

Thanks to all of you at NJAJ who are always willing to lend me, and every other member of this organization,  your ears and your hands.

As I have proven to you tonight, I really do come from a family of talkers.

But I also know how to listen.

My figurative door will be always open to listen to you so that I, in my role as President of NJAJ, can speak for all of us.

Thank you to all of you NJAJ members for trusting me to serve as this year’s NJAJ  President.

I have learned and continue to learn so much from each of you and I am excited to see what we can accomplish together over the course of the next year.

As many of you have heard me say before, I am the last baby boomer to serve as a President of NJAJ. And I am looking forward to working closely with the next generation of NJAJ’s leaders.

I am thrilled to be the bridge from one generation to another.

 

The time has come for all of us active trial lawyers to recognize that we have more in common with each other than not.

Let’s spend our time sharing our knowledge – the law is not a one-way street. We  boomers have a lot to learn from Generation X  and millennials – and to you Gen Xers and millennials, we baby boomers still have a lot to offer.

This is not an organization of us and them. It is an organization whose umbrella is large enough to cover all of us.

As Elena Kagan, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court has said:

“No one has a monopoly on truth or wisdom. We make progress by listening to each other.”