Survivor mentality

• Author: Angela Morris
• Pages: 35-35

SURVIVOR MENTALITY

As the number of workplace and mass shootings continues to rise, law fi rms are seeking

out professionals to hold active shooter drills By Angela Morris

Last year, a Houston

lawyer went to Las

Vegas to attend a

country music festiv al

but came home a sur -

vivor of a tragic t ype of

mass violence that ha s become all too

common in moder n America.

When a gunman opened fi re w ith

a semi-automatic rifl e at the Route 91

Harvest fest ival, killing 58 concertgo -

ers and woundi ng 546, this attorne y

survived u sing the survival mind-

set she had learned when her law

fi rm hosted an active sho oter defense

course at the o ce.

“I’ve had four people come for-

ward and tell me the tra ining I’ve

provided saved their lives when

an active shooter showed up,” says

Stephen Danie l, the Houston Police

Departme nt instructor and s enior

community l iaison who trained the

survivor at her law fi rm. Dan iel says

she and her fi rm wished to remai n

anonymous be cause the shooting wa s

so traumatic .

In a country where ma ss shootings

happen with i ncreasing frequenc y,

it’s becoming more common for law

fi rms to bring active shoot er defense

instruc tors on-site to tea ch their law-

yers and sta about how to surv ive a

shooting situation. Daniel say s he’s

taught attor neys at 30 Houston-are a

law fi rms about the “run, hide, fi ght”

method of surv iving an active shooter.

Daniel was one of the ac tive shooter

instructor s to present sessions at suc-

cessive annual con ferences of the

Association of Legal Administrators,

where some law fi rm administra tors

fi rst got the idea to bring the act ive

shooter training to t heir fi rms.

“Safety of our employees is pa ra-

mount,” says John Meredith, chief

operating o cer of Chamberlain,

Hrdlicka, W hite, Williams & Aughtr y

in Houston, who fi rst heard an active

shooter trainer spea k at a meeting of

the Houston chapter of the AL A. “We

take it seriously.”

Meredith says he brings the cou rses

into all his fi rm’s o ces a nnually

because he wants t o keep up with

best practice s. Firms can usually c all

their local police depa rtments for free

training, and t he FBI also o ers it, he

notes.

TRAINING IS KEY

Blank Rome teams up w ith law

enforcement for active shooter cou rses

in all the cities where it ke eps o ces,

and the fi rm has created a man-

agement training progr am to teach

about indicat ors of workplace vio -

lence, according to Rob ert Weaver,

the Philadelphia-based c hief risk and

s e c u r i t y o  c e r .

“This is a sal ient issue for law fi rms,

particula rly given the recent attacks

targeti ng lawyers and judges . Whether

in the o ce s of the fi rm or in cour t,

attorneys need to k now how to react

to this ty pe of event,” Weaver said in

an email.

Ken Sweet, president of the Gre ater

Los Angeles chapter of t he Association

of Legal Admi nistrators, knows of

a few law fi rms in the city that have

o ered t he training.

The Los Angeles Count y Bar Ass-

ociation o ered a course in January.

Sweet, o ce manager at Clark Hill

in Los Angeles, note s that his fi rm’s

Las Vegas o ce t ook part in an active

shooter course in Septemb er o ered

by the building’s management com-

pany. Active shooter train ing ought to

be part of any law fi rm’s safety reper-

toire, just like fi re dri lls or earthquake

preparedness, he says.

“It’s become a more common pr ob-

lem. You hear about it on the news

more and more, and I think if p eo-

ple don’t know how to act or react to

something like this , then they are very

vulnerable ,” he says.

A widely accepted de fi nition from

the federal government is th at a mass

shooting is an event where thre e or

more people die, not counting the

gunman. Mo ther Jones magazine,

which uses that defi nition to tra ck

mass shootings, re corded 11 mass

shootings in 2017, with 117 killed and

587 wounded. The Las Vegas shooting

accounted for most of those . Mother

Jones re corded 10 mass shootings this

year at press time, w ith 65 dead and

45 injured.

The legal industry h as not been

immune to workplace shooti ngs. In

June, two paralega ls were shot to

death when a shooter tied to an old

divorce case entere d the Scottsdale,

Arizona , o ce of family law fi rm Burt

Feldman Grenier. Atlanta divorc e

attorney Anton io Mari was shot to

death in June by his client’s husband,

pol ice s ay.

In December 2017, at an o ce hol-

iday party, an ex-part ner of the Law

O ces of Perona , Langer, Beck,

Serbin and Harri son in Long Beach,

California , shot two other name

partners— one was killed, t he other

injured—and then t he gunman shot

himself.

Daniel, the Hous ton-based instr uc-

tor, tells the lawyers he tr ains that the

best option in an act ive shooter situa-

tion is to escape by ru nning away, and

the second is to hide in a room and

lock the door. If those options won’t

work, fi ght ing is the last choice.

He discourages people fr om carry-

ing guns, noting tha t the idea of being

a “good guy with a g un” and stopping

an active shooter c omes with seri-

ous dangers. O cers responding to

a shooting are looking for any per -

son with a gun a nd could mistake the

“good guy” for the cri minal shooter.

Daniel adds that he would n’t want

to see an amateu r marksman in a

shootout amid a crowd of people.

Instead, he ask s his students to

visualiz e a gunman anywhere they

commonly go—work , court, church,

stores, mov ie theaters or concer ts—

and imagine a plan for r unning, hid-

ing or fi ghting.

“I’m teaching people a sur vival

mindset,” he says. “I’m teach ing them

how to think, so if t hey ever get in

one of these situations, they c an make

intelligent c hoices.” Q

Of ces

DECEMBER 2018 ABA JOURNAL || 35

Business of Law

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