Douglas Church: A 50 Year Journey of Practicing Law

Strickland Bonner: So you're a lawyer, and your clients are squeezing you for lower fees. How do you put more cash in your pocket? We want to expose you to new ways of practicing law. Endless hours with no home life and a lease on an expensive office are so 1999. It's time to make a change for the better. Here to help you with that are your hosts Ron Bockstahler and Kirsten Mayfield. Welcome to the 1958 Lawyer Podcast.

Ron Bockstahler: All right, so welcome to the show, the 1958 Lawyer. Got a great guest. My name is Ron Bockstahler.

Kirsten Mayfield: My name is Kirsten Mayfield, and with us today we have Douglas Church. He is the senior partner at Church Church Hittle + Antrim. He has been practicing law for 50 years. You know, I have to ask you, Doug. You said that your daughter and your son-they both became lawyers. You're working 50 years at a law firm with your last name. Is there family legacy here? Are they going to be joining on board? Have they already?

Douglas Church: My uncle Manson Church was the first church in the Church Church Hittle + Antrim name. However, the firm was begun in 1880 by a Quaker gentleman named Joseph A. Roberts, and he had two sons who joined him in the practice. Manson joined the practice after he finished up law school following World War II service. I joined the practice in 1970. My son joined our practice and then got recruited away from us. And my daughter, who went to Loyola Law School in Chicago, is the general counsel for Sigma Kappa Sorority, which has their headquarters here in Indianapolis, so I don't know that there'll be a third church in the firm, but that's all right.

Kirsten Mayfield: Well, you got those four grandchildren, so I mean

Douglas Church: that's right. There's still hope.

Ron Bockstahler: So Doug, can you take us back 50 years, and why did you choose to become an attorney?

Douglas Church: Well, it goes back farther than 50 years, when I was a young person growing up in Muncie, Indiana, where my dad was working at that time for General Motors, the people who seemed to be the most influential in various aspects of life that touched me-church, Boy Scouts, school-were lawyers. They were community-minded. They were fun. They were entertaining. I didn't really know what they did, but being a lawyer seemed like a pretty good thing. Perry Mason may have influenced me a little bit too. Somewhere along the line, my uncle, who was practicing here in Noblesville at the time, had invited me to spend a couple of days with him. Well, I think my parents were at a convention, and he hauled me around with him to court, down to the state house to file some papers, and so I got a little bit better inkling. And for some reason, it just kind of focused my mind on the idea that I wanted to be a lawyer, and I never wavered from that objective. That was what I wanted to be from the time I was probably 12 or 13 years old. And guess what happened? I became a lawyer.

Ron Bockstahler: And most recently, became a legendary lawyer at the Indiana Bar Foundation. Congratulations!

Douglas Church: Well, thank you.

Ron Bockstahler: Can you expound on what that means to you.

Douglas Church: Well, it's humbling to say the least. The Bar Foundation began this program a number of years ago to honor someone who had practiced law for 50 years. That's kind of a minimum, so it narrows the field down. You've got to survive 50 years in the practice of law before you qualify to be considered for this recognition, and then they had some other criteria, and somehow or another, I got nominated, and I showed up for one of our firm meetings here a number of months ago, and there was a strange group of people in the room, and they announced that I had been selected as the legendary lawyer for the year 2020, and they had the ceremony virtually here about a week ago, and it was very nice. Had lots of old friends who had things to say and forced me to spend a lot of time reminiscing about events of the last 50 years. But I'm very honored and humbled to have been selected this year.

Ron Bockstahler: I want to kind of take you a little bit back and talk about what it was like when you were coming out of law school. What the practice of law was like compared to what it is today.

Douglas Church: Well, it's it's about as different as it can be. My senior year in law school, I was the Seventh Circuit Governor of the Law Student Division of the American Bar Association, and as a result of that, I got to travel around not only the Seventh Circuit but to ABA meetings around the country, and I got to meet a lot of lawyers. Had some opportunities to go various places and. I had clerked here at the firm for about a year and a half, and then became a clerk for the Indiana Appellate Court the last two years of law school, and so I had a pretty good exposure to a variety of practice areas. And one of the things that attracted me to Noblesville was it seemed to me that that it was a little slower pace. You could kind of see the rising tide of growth in the county was going to float a lot of boats, and that seemed to be attractive. And then to have my name on the door, even though it wasn't mine, made some sense too. But people came to work at 830 They went home at five. They took an hour for lunch. They didn't come to work at all on Wednesday afternoons because they went out to play golf or do something else. Saturday mornings were blue jeans in the office with no phones on. Technology, to the extent that we thought of technology beyond having a telephone, was a Thermofax machine that would produce a copy of a of a piece of paper on a ugly looking thermofax paper in about 35 or 40 seconds. IBM Selectric typewriters were finally starting to be a little bit more prolific. There was no such thing as a cell phone, handheld calculator, computers-those things just weren't even part of your thought process. We'd usually take a coffee break about 10 o'clock in the morning and meet with other business people around the square. Spend half an hour finding out what was going on in the community. Same thing in the afternoon, about 3o'clock Client meetings were in your office typically when you met with a client. I think, as I may have said to you, Ron, the senior partner at the time I started, a gentleman named Justin Roberts, said that whenever I met with a person for the first time and they presented me with their problem, I should number one be a good listener and really make sure I understood what the problem was, and then secondly, that when they finished the explanation, I should say that's a very interesting question. Let me give some thought to that, and I'll get back to you. And that was to honor the fact that they'd given you a real problem to think about, and to give you time to actually figure out how to best address the problem they had presented. Of course, the contrast with today-we have all kinds of equipment. We're in real time, 20-four-seven. It is not unheard of that a client will send an email at 3o'clock in the morning and expect an answer about 315 We couldn't even begin to think about the kind of editing of a document that we do today. Typically, I would write out a motion or a brief in longhand, and I would do all of the fixes in in longhand before I ever thought about giving it to a secretary or even beginning the dictation process. Because once the secretary typed it, the idea that you'd go in and make significant changes meant you'd have to type the entire thing over again. So we just didn't do that. Today you can begin dictating, or you can begin typing on your computer, and you can make all kinds of changes. And and typically we do. You can, unlike the old days when you'd work on a document, put it in the mail, and go to the golf course, and three days later look for it to come back. Today we have people literally around the country, if not around the world, working on a document in real time at the same time. So nobody ever gets the golf course anymore. We're all slaves to our computer and huge, huge differences.

Ron Bockstahler: So, putting that in perspective, what things have we lost? Are the intangibles that maybe aren't happening today that need to come back? Maybe the pendulum's gone a little too far with technology. Is there some things that you would tell younger attorneys today to say, take a step back and you know remember to do this.

Douglas Church: Oh yeah, and I do that on a regular basis with the lawyers, young lawyers in our office. That you need to do a couple of things. You need to take time for yourself. Number one, because the law is a jealous mistress, and you can find yourself working 1214, hours a day, and I hate to say that, but that's been true of me on more than one occasion. So I think it's important to try to make sure you don't let yourself become a slave to your practice. And secondly, I think it's maybe the single most important thing we talk about within our practice, and that's maintaining personal relationships with your partners and associates. It is all too easy, and as we have grown and spread out to different offices around the state of Indiana, to stay in touch with people. So we make a practice of having events that. Encourage us to get together on a personal level. We have typical Friday lunch together, where we put the lunch out for everybody, and anybody that's around can show up. We invite guests in to speak to us from time to time. Justice of the Supreme Court Law School professor, the dean of the law school. We have after work events from time to time, we have firm wide events from time to time where we're getting people together for social events. This year, of course, has been remarkable for the lack of those opportunities. Right before the shutdown, we were down at French Lick, Indiana, for a retreat, and I said that was a good thing because with the last chance to get everybody together in a friendly and social setting, merely to reaffirm the relationships is extremely important.

Kirsten Mayfield: You know, in your firm and just in the way it seems you have taken your choices in life, it's been about community. About you know yes the name is your last name on the firm so as you joked it made sense to join but there's also that you know there's that familial tie there when I visited your firm's website community was also a big thing that was spoken of on there so when you're in this new modern world which is often plotted for its ability to open up the world to you can talk to people you'd never be able to talk to before. Do you think that there's by people expanding out and talking to people that are further away, are they kind of losing that connection with the people who are right next door?

Douglas Church: Well, I don't think so. Certainly, it's possible. And somebody who chooses to lock themselves in their office and be a slave to their computer misses out on those opportunities. Which is why we are very intentional in making certain that we have chances for people to interact socially and professionally. This is a contrast in styles, I suppose, of management theories and philosophies. I think there was a group. I think their name was the Capitol Steps. That they were like congressional aides that put on a fun act and they recorded a song called "I'm Billing Time, and it was kind of hilarious when it first came out. But so many firms have all kinds of formalistic approaches and ways of gaging your success or failure based upon billable hours. They're not unimportant, obviously, but thinking about the implication of that becomes extremely important in the context of the dynamics of how you think about practicing. If you're in a situation where the regime says you're the originating lawyer, you only get an apportionment of the fees that are earned if you do certain things, you tend to shy away from creating the team that might be the most effective way of addressing an issue because you don't want to give up your time. You don't want to give up your share of the billable hour. Our approach is that when we know what the problem is, we assemble the best team we can, the best team, the people who have the right skill sets to be effective in addressing the problem, and it doesn't make any difference how that fee is allocated because the fee is coming into the firm. And if you're working hard, putting in your time, being professional in how you approach things, trying to do the best job you can, then you're going to be rewarded for that. And it's not going to be based upon a more formalistic or mathematical assessment, it's going to be based upon an understanding on a qualified basis of how you've contributed the firm. There, there are people who engage in kinds of practices that are not as remunerative as others. That doesn't make their practice any less important, or the fact that they address client needs in a particular way, and the other side of that equation, to your point, Kirsten, is the fact that we have always had a history of being involved in the community. The cynic would say, "Well, that's one way to get clients-you kind of get out and familiarize yourself in the community, and that's certainly true. But the objective should be to try to improve the place where you live. I think on our website we have a listing of all of the different organizations that we support, either financially or with our time, and it's quite an impressive list, and it's very diverse. We tell our our lawyers, money follows passion. If you're involved in something and you're passionate about it, and they need a contribution, that's exactly where we want to put our money, and we do. We we make substantial contributions on an annual basis in support of a variety of community organizations. As our practice has spread, not. Around the state and around the country, that's caused us to think a little bit more intentionally about how we make our contributions and what we can do with our money to help support worthy causes. But that's still our objective.

Ron Bockstahler: Now you kind of led right into my next question. I did go to your website and I looked at your profile, and earlier you were telling us that you know you know back in a certain day you'd come in at 830 you'd leave at five and and I have a picture of a Norman Rockwell picture in my head and I'm like wow that's exactly the life that you you know a lot of people want to live, but I'm looking at all your awards recognitions professional. memberships, organizations, community involvement. How do you? How did you find time to do three, almost four pages of these things, and still, you know, kind of maintain a work-life balance?

Douglas Church: Yeah. Well, I was forced to say at this legendary lawyer ceremony my apologies to my family for all the hours I spent off pursuing my outside interests. I did make my best effort to spend a lot of quality time with my family as well, but I've always operated under the theory that you got to be somewhere. So some people choose to be somewhere by sitting in their easy chair watching TV every. Some people sit and read a book. I chose to just spend my time being involved with organizations that were advancing some cause that I felt strongly about, and that's what happened. You know, over time you get involved in things that you have a passion about, and in some cases you end up in some leadership roles. And 50 years-a long time to accumulate a lot of memories about things that you've been engaged in. Right? I'm not sure how better to answer that question.

Ron Bockstahler: That was excellent. Yeah, I mean, I think you said it earlier when you said money follows passion, and you did what you enjoyed doing, and it's sounds like a great career. I

Kirsten Mayfield: have to say too, like a lot of the attorneys that we've spoken with so far on this podcast, and just since I've been working with Amata office suites for the past four years, and hearing stories from Ron about his friends who are attorneys, there's like an altruism there with going into the legal profession. There's there's a desire to to impact your community in a great way, and I don't know if it's the fact that I might have been tainted by the you know flashiness of the '80s. You know, I'm 28, never existed in the '80s, but I felt like you know, American Psycho, that kind of whole consumer golden handcuffs idea of you know people that make big money, lawyers, brokers, stock market people. You've been around for 50 years, so in your experience, like what is the attorney? What was the attorney back then? Was it the way you're describing it now, and the way that I've experienced it in the past four years, where it's these people that get into the legal profession because they want to enact change, or is it people that, like, I hear some of my friends say, "Oh, I want to become an attorney because I want to make good money, and I go don't unless you love it because I watch these people and they work really hard. Do you do you find that it's always been that way where it's always been I'm doing this because I can see how it would improve the world I live in and the community I live in, or was there a change there where there was a lot of people joining the legal profession just because they thought it was a good way to expand their own personal wealth and their family's wealth as well.

Douglas Church: Some some sociologist or somebody has probably done a study or will do a study at some point on how that shift has occurred. I think I think there has always been an element of altruism that motivates people who want to go to law school, and not everybody, obviously. But I mean, as I'm thinking about my law school class, I think certainly the majority of them had a certain level of "I want to do good. I want to help people" built into the motivation to go to law school. My dad always told me, as a young person, if you set out to make money, you're going to be disappointed because there will never be enough. If you set out to do a good job at whatever it is you're doing, money will follow because people will appreciate your good work, whatever that may be. And I believe that that is true. I think certainly in my case, I have had the opportunity to to make a decent living, and I don't think that's because I set out to make money. I think it's because we've had the opportunity to provide good law practice and serve our clients, and I think that's true of most lawyers in our firm. There is a challenge today, and it it has been around for quite some time now, over at least a decade, called a multidisciplinary practice, where you get away from having law law firms owned by lawyers that could be owned by other businesses, with an emphasis on the business side, we're here to make a profit. We're going to figure out ways to make these firms more profitable. We're going to combine them with accounting practices and engineering firms, so we can be a full-service business. The practice of law is is different. Certainly, there is a business element to it, and you should never lose sight of that, but it's a profession, and just that word means that you have elements associated with what it is you do that are beyond business. We take an oath when we're admitted to the bar. We are regulated profession. You don't have the right to be a lawyer just because you want to be, you've got to go through a process, and then you've got to accept ethical duties and responsibilities associated with that. There's been a strong emphasis in Indiana, and I think across the country, for more pro bono commitment from lawyers, and I think that's part of fulfilling that professional responsibility. So the challenges will always be there, and there will always be a certain element of people who are in it for the money, and a certain element of people who are truly there in pursuit of altruistic objectives. I mean, some people who are involved in legal aid, Southern poverty law. I mean, you can name some of these where we're crying out loud. They can't be making much money, but they are committing huge amounts of time in furtherance of what they believe to be a worthy goal to serve the country, to serve a certain part of the population. So, I honor that and I respect that, and I think that that is part of what it takes to be a good lawyer, is to recognize that you you should understand your privilege to be a lawyer in the first place. You have an obligation to give something back,

Ron Bockstahler: and let's kind of move from that, Doug. There's a couple organizations that you are very, very passionate about and been very involved in. So, can you tell us a little about Conner Prairie, what it is, what you do for it, and why it's made where you live a better place?

Douglas Church: Well, I'll try to make this a reasonably short story because it could be a long story. Eli Lilly, who was actually the son of the founder of of the international drug company Eli Lilly and Company decided back in the 1930s that a brick house that was built by one of the early settlers in Indiana, William Conner, should be preserved, and it was because it had huge historical significance. It was the first brick house in Central Indiana. It was the site of all kinds of major events. The group that was appointed to select a capital city for Indiana met there. Court was held in that house. William Conner was an entrepreneur. He had a lot of things going on, so Eli Lilly bought the house and ultimately 1,500 acres along White River, and he began a collection of log cabins that he thought kind of fit the period. And as time went on, this this grew to be more of a passion for mr. Lilly, collecting historic artifacts. He was a friend, actually, of of the Rockefellers and the Fords, who had Deerfield Village and Williamsburg. So he he had this understanding of the idea of an outdoor living history museum. He did. I don't think he called it that, but he understood that concept, and long story short, he he is at a point in his life where he knows that he isn't going to go on forever, and he he wants to perpetuate this piece of property and the historical value of the Connor House, etc. And he appointed Earlham College to be the trustee, and unfortunately, in the deeds of gift that he made and the various money and real property that he donated, he said that the first call on the income was to be for the use of Conner Prairie to further its objectives, and then he said, and if there's any money left over from the income, Earlham can use it in furtherance of its educational purposes. Well, not everybody is would understand that conflict, but it certainly was a conflict. It put Earlham in a position as trustee to decide how much money to spend on Conor Prairie in order to see how much money could be left. Over for Earl, and the philanthropic community in Indianapolis came to understand this issue. Lilly Endowment, which was the philanthropic successor to mr. Lilly and a number of his family members, and a huge major philanthropic institution in this country, raised issues about it, and fundraising for Conner Prairie dried up because most people said we're not going to do that because the money will end up with Earlham. That's fine for Earlham, but not fine for our objective of enhancing Conner Prairie. mr. Lilly, in his lifetime, had hired professionals who had started to develop the concept of an outdoor living history museum in far more concrete terms, and to be very intentional about what they added to the collection, both in terms of buildings as well as other things that fit a time period in Indiana history. Earlham formed a corporation called Connor Prairie Inc. and the only member of that not-for-profit was Earlham, but they populated the board with people around the Indianapolis area that they thought would attract contributions and would overcome this concern about the conflict. I have hesitated my entire life from serving on what I call tea and crumpets boards, where it's more about enhancing your resume and showing up to get a nice meal and hear a report from somebody a couple times a year. But somehow or another, I I was invited to join the Conner Prairie Board, and when I did, several other people came on at the same time that I did. One was Sarah Vince Barker, who's a federal now senior judge in the federal system in Indiana, and Berkeley Duck, who was managing partner at Ice Miller, a large Indianapolis-based firm. And the three of us, as we became acquainted with Conor Prairie, started asking questions about this governance, and and somehow or another, it seemed to be a mystery why, when we'd ask for more money to do something that was good for Conor Prairie, the Earlham board would veto the budget request. This ultimately led to the creation of a governance committee to meet with Earlham to try to work out the details of a governance structure that would overcome these problems, and Earlham apparently felt threatened by that, and ultimately fired the board of Conner Prairie Inc. including me and all the others. They also fired the CEO. Ultimately, the attorney general of Indiana had to step in because, under the laws pertaining to the attorney general, he has the right to be the overseer of public trusts, and this was a public trust. And again, long story short, the end result of his investigation was a compromise that separated Earlham and Conner Prairie. Earlham got some things. Conner Prairie got real estate, money. Both institutions continue to thrive today. But it it really did create an independent Conner Prairie, and that independence gave Conner Prairie the ability to really start to begin to fulfill its dreams, it's 1000 acres along White River, which makes it a huge green footprint in the middle of a hugely developed suburban area of our state. Its portrayal of history, 1836 Prairie Town, a Civil War experience, a a balloon that takes you up 500 feet over central Indiana that evokes an historic event, which was the first air mail of the U.S. Postal Service was from Lafayette, Indiana, in a hot air balloon. They they gave a contract to a guy in 1854 to try this out, and he was supposed to take the mail, deliver it from Lafayette, Indiana, to New York on a hot air balloon, but the wind was going the other direction, and he ended up in St. Louis or somewhere. So it was a failed experiment, but nonetheless, it was the first event, and we have that entire history portrayed there, as well as the opportunity to get in hot air baller. It's not a hot air; it's helium filled, and go up and look out over the landscape. We have a partnership with the Indianapolis Symphony, which allows for symphony on the prairie, outdoor music venue, just beautiful settings looking out over the river, we honor the Delaware Indians who were there. William Connor, after the man after whom Connor Prairie is named, had created a trading post and married the daughter of the Indian chief of the time, McKinsey's, and they had. Children, so we have a portrayal of all that history that helps people and school children. I think something in the neighborhood of 150,000 school children per year come to Conner Prairie for a tour, and it's an opportunity to really get them a firsthand introduction into Indiana history. There, hard to make this a short story.

Ron Bockstahler: No, and it was an excellent story, and we appreciate you sharing it. I think it really it it says volumes to the the the results of the work, maybe not intended when you started, but we look back and say, how do we have some of these cultural events or cultural places that still exist in our country, and it's because someone such as yourself took the time to first take a board membership on what you call it-a tea and potentially a tea and crumpet.

Douglas Church: I don't like tea and crumpet boards,

Ron Bockstahler: but make something great happen. And looking where we're at today, and the results are amazing. So hopefully that'll inspire others to do the same thing. So, thank you very much, Doug. We like to end our show with one final question, and I'll kind of allow you make a change to it. It's the question is: What is the one thing in the legal profession that you would like to see changed? And you can change that to maybe: What's the one thing you would like to leave with our younger attorneys, listeners?

Douglas Church: Well, when this, I'll try not to make this too long-winded. But when mediation first began, I don't know that anybody fully understand the implications or understood the implications of what that meant to trial by jury. I had the good fortune in my early career to be in a place where I got to try lots and lots of jury trials, and not only is it a mechanism to engage your peers and the community in the process, and to allow them to be the deciders. It's also a way to get a sense of how the community feels about certain things, both in civil and criminal cases. When a jury makes a decision, that that's a benchmark that you can look to, and that's a guide for other cases of a similar nature. Well, you know, this jury thought that that broken arm was worth $15,000 I mean, it may be as mundane as that, or in a criminal case where they make a decision that finds a person not guilty because the state hadn't done a good enough job. They need to do a better job. Mediation, as it turns out, is kind of a privatization of the judicial process, and it's wonderful to settle cases. It's wonderful to be able to resolve disputes without the necessity of trial. I would never argue that point, but there are so few jury trials anymore, contrasted with what there were before. That I'm afraid we've lost some of that benchmarking that comes from having a jury in a community make a decision that signals how the community feels about a particular issue. So, if there was one thing I would do, if I knew how to do it, I'd say more jury trials for those of us who enjoyed engaging in a jury trial. I'd rather cross-examine an expert witness than eat. It gives us great pleasure to have trials. There are a lot of young lawyers as a mediator, and I've done a lot of mediations. You have somebody come in and say, "Well, we'll just go to trial, and I'll ask them, "Well, how many trials have you had? Well, not many, if any. So people just aren't getting a chance to go to court as lawyers and have the experience of trying a case and understanding the dynamics of trying a case. The community is deprived of the chance to find out more about how they feel about particular issues because we're not getting those kind of decisions on a regular basis, so that might be it. Other than that, I think we live in a time when civics education has been diminished to the point that in many school corporations around the country they don't teach civics anymore. They're so engaged in STEM that they don't have the time, or they choose to take civics off the calendar. We need more civics education. The Indiana Bar Foundation sponsors a program called We the People, which is a nationwide program that engages junior high and high school students in what is supposed to be kind of a congressional hearing approach to the examination of a particular issue involving constitutional law or the Bill of Rights-it's fabulous-and the historical data shows that about 90% of the kids who go through that program vote vote every time, so they understand the value of civics and understanding. How our country and how our governance structure works, and I fear that they're just an awful lot of people that, because they haven't had that experience, don't, and they tend to be reactionary because of whatever news show they're watching or what they're reading, as opposed to fundamentally having an understanding. And I think that's one of the things lawyers are uniquely qualified to help with, and should do more often. I'm proud of our Indiana Bar Foundation and our Indiana State Bar Association because we really have put money and people behind those ideas to help foster more civics education in our schools around the state, and to give people a chance to really have a better understanding of what our country is founded on, how our constitution works, what our Bill of Rights means in terms of the rights of citizens, and you can't have enough of that, in my opinion.

Ron Bockstahler: Well, Doug, thank you very much. It has been a privilege and an honor to have you on the show and the opportunity to speak with you. Be living on in my mind for a very long time. So, thank you for joining us.

Douglas Church: Yeah, thank you.

Kirsten Mayfield: Yes, thank you. Good

Douglas Church: to see you both.

Ron Bockstahler: Thank you. This has been the 1958 lawyer. Thanks for joining us, and we'll hear from you next time.

Strickland Bonner: Thanks for listening to the 1958 Lawyer Podcast. If you like the show, tell a friend, and please subscribe, rate, and review us on Apple Podcasts, Google, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you'd like to hear more about Ron, Kirsten, or Amata, go to amataoffices.com All the links are also available in show notes.