Skate keys and the lone ranger.

• Author: Ryan, Joseph W., Jr.
• Position: Generation gap in legal profession - President's page

There's an old song from the 70's, a phrase of which goes, "I've got a brand new pair of roller skates, you've got a brand new key." This song is part of a television commercial these days and my son, Joby, and I were watching television when the commercial came on. He said to me, "What does that mean about a key?" I told him that it referred to a skate key, a metal key that we used to use to tighten the front grips of the metal roller skates onto the bottom of our shoes when we went skating as kids. Joby had never heard of a skate key.

Just the other day, I was in the office with one of our junior associates who is an equestrian. She had a photo of herself on her horse jumping over a hurdle. Her horse was white. I asked if she had named her horse Silver and she replied "No." I asked her if she knew who Silver was, and she said "No." I said "Don't you know who rode a big white stallion named Silver and said, 'A hardy hi-ho Silver'?" She said, "No." I said, "Do you know who the Lone Ranger is?" And she said, "No." These two instances highlight for me the differences between lawyers of my generation and younger lawyers. (1)

When I started working in a law firm in Charlottesville, Virginia in the mid 70's, we used carbon paper. No court rule ever required more than six copies and an original, because carbon paper could only make those six copies (as I recall). Files were noticeably slimmer than the case files I would encounter ten, twenty or thirty years later. When I started at that law finn, there were no computers. We had "mag cards" which had stop codes where you could insert a name or change a date or put in numbers in an otherwise boilerplate memorandum or letter.

Back in Charlottesville in the mid 70's, we learned to "shepardize." We learned to use "pocket parts." When I first began to practice law, I dictated my letters to a secretary, who sat across from me and took my dictation down in shorthand. The letters would be typed and presented to me for review. If changes had to be made, the letters would be retyped, I would sign them, they would be mailed and a day (or two or three) later, they would be received. Two or three more days, I might get a response to that letter. In the meantime, I had about a full week to cogitate on the matter, to think about where we were and to decide what the next steps might be.

All that is gone. It's not just that our newer lawyers today don't know what a skate key was used for or that the Lone Ranger...