Desperately, she pulled at her sweat suit squirming in a bucket seat as the coffee seared her skin By the time they reached an emergency room, second and third degree burns had spread across her buttocks and her lap. 
Later, a jury awarded her $2.9 million after a trial; a judge knocked that down to $640,000 Stella Liebeck became the poster lady for the bitter “tort reform” effort. 
I talk to you about Stella Liebeck, because no one can talk about the justice system, whether in the context of free expression or any other, without talking about the McDonald’s coffee case So along with Jay Leno and all the rest, so do I refer you to Stella Liebeck. 
Her case illustrates many different things for many different people. For me, it illustrates the misunderstanding and the miscommunication about the justice system. 
You probably have never heard that after the coffee spill, Mrs. Liebeck spent seven days in an Albuquerque hospital and about three weeks recuperating at home with her daughter. Then she was hospitalized again for skin grafts. She had lost 20 pounds—down to 83 pounds—and was practically immobilized. The grafts were almost as painful as the burn.
Mrs. Liebeck wrote to McDonald’s asking the company to turn down the coffee temperature. She was not planning to sue but she thought she was entitled to her out-of-pocket expenses, about $2,000, plus lost wages of her daughter who stayed home to care for her McDonald’s offered her $800.00.

She then did what many aggrieved people do. She went hunting for a lawyer. 
That lawyer took her case to the cornerstone of our justice system: a jury. Initially this was a jury that was annoyed at having to listen to a case about spilled coffee. But they learned that coffee at 170_ would cause second-degree burns within 3.5 seconds of hitting the skin and that the company had not lowered the heat under the coffee despite receiving 700 burn complaints over 10 years.

While the generalized popular image of lawyers is bad, 
most people’s opinions of their own lawyers is very good.

Knowing these facts and others, it may not now surprise you to find that the jury awarded her $160,000 in actual damages and $2.7 in punitive damages. The judge eventually lowered the amount to $640,000.
With only a few exceptions, only the headline got reported, none of the details–“Despite lawsuit brew, hot coffee no burning issue” “Award to a woman scalds McDonalds” “Ronald McDonald better have a really good lawyer” “Turning up the heat on McJava”.
This case illustrates misperceptions and disregard for the system.
Perhaps, instead of worrying about our image, I should spend more time thinking about how we can improve our profession and improve our justice system. Then maybe in a thousand years or so the image will come around.
But, I truly believe that fundamental to the working of the system, is people’s faith in it and that greater understanding will stop some of the wrong-headed attempts to curtail its role and power to protect our rights and to enforce our obligations Loss of public confidence is the rule of law and the independence of the judiciary truly threatens to lose the glue that holds our society together.
The public image itself is somewhat complicated and it isn’t all bad.
First, the image of the lawyer in movies and television contains several distinct models from the lawyer as hero to the lawyer as shyster. My children claim that I watched L.A. Law to learn about the law. In fact, I watched it for the sex.
People are ambivalent about lawyers the same way they’re ambivalent about law. And most people see a lawyer when they’re in trouble or when there’s some kind of dispute; when they are getting a divorce, probating a will, they’ve been hurt, or even are starting a business.
While as lawyers we can be proud that we’re helping people get out of trouble, or helping resolve disputes, the bottom line is that for most people the whole experience is not going to create a warm, fuzzy feeling.
Now for some historical perspective. To the extent the image is bad, its been bad for a long, long time. The Bible in Luke 11:46 contains a passage that reads: “woe unto you also, ye lawyers’ for ye lade men with burdens grievous to be borne, and ye yourselves touch not the burdens with one of your fingers.” 
American school books in the early nineteenth century often contained the following rhyme: 

To fit up a village with tackle for tillage
Jack Carter he took to the saw.
To pluck and to pillage, the same little village
Tim Gordon he took to the law.1’

As a lawyer, it is almost comforting to realize that lawyer-bashing has been going on for hundreds of years At least I know I didn’t cause it.
While the generalized popular image of lawyers is bad, most people’s opinions of their own lawyers is very good So if you ask most people what they think of lawyers, you get one answer; and, if you ask them what they think of their own lawyer, you get a very different answer. So we must be doing something right.
Columnist Art Buchwald wrote: “I was very much in favor of my lawyers and very skeptical about my opposition’s lawyers. My lawyers were brave, honest people, who only believed in justice. The lawyers who opposed us were crafty, double-dealing skunks who were only concerned with earning their enormous fees and showing the judge they were smarter than he was.” 
Abraham Lincoln, for whom I have a special admiration because as a lawyer he really established his reputation as an appellate attorney (he handled over 300 cases on appeal2, may have said it best. Lincoln said: 

“There is a vague popular belief that lawyers are necessarily dishonest. I say vague, because when we consider to what extent confidence and honors are conferred upon lawyers by the people, it appears improbable that their impression of dishonesty is very distinct and vivid.” 

There’s another problem with lawyers getting defensive about either fair or unfair criticism. We overlook that lawyers are partially responsible for our poor public image. Lawyers do a poor job in explaining to our clients what the justice system is about and what a lawyer’s role should be, Two social scientists studied lawyer-client conversations by sitting in on hundreds of lawyer-client interviews. What they found is that lawyers paint a very bleak picture of the legal system. 
They paint a negative picture of judges and an extremely negative picture of other lawyers. They also found that “lawyers rarely either defend the legal system or make positive claims about the values to which it aspires and the results that can be achieved through it.” This lawyer-talk, they conclude, “may be partially responsible for the oft-noted finding that people who use legal processes tend, no matter how favorable the results of their encounter, to have a less positive view of the law that those with no direct experience.”3 We need to do a better job. 
If you look at what our legal system is trying to accomplish, the most heroic figure in the legal profession is the criminal defense attorney. Under Communism, we saw a system where someone is sentenced first then tried. It takes a lot for a country to be committed to the presumption of innocence and, without defense attorneys, that presumption is meaningful. So defense attorneys play a very important role in forcing the government to play by the rules. 
One frequent criticism is that we have too many lawsuits. It’s hard to say when a society has too any lawsuits. Anyone who’s been sued will tell you there’s too many lawsuits. In a perfect society, you wouldn’t have lawsuits. We’re not perfect. However in historical perspective, the per capita rate of litigation was higher in some American colonies than it is now.4 We usually don’t think about Pilgrims suing each other, but they did and evidently liked it. One historian found that the litigation rate in the 1970s was about half what it was during the early nineteenth century.5 Closer to home, Stephen F. Austin in 1829 remarked that “it is a part of the national character of Americans to be contentious and litigious.”6 The largest growth in negligence cases came in the late 19th century when claims increased 800%.7 That came with the rise of an industrial society. There’s no golden age in American history where Americans didn’t heavily rely on courts to resolve disputes.
In Texas, the largest number of civil findings by far isn’t tort cases, but family law matters. In recent years, the largest segment of new civil cases (31%) was divorce actions. Tax cases were second (17.9%), and family law matters, other than divorce, were third. Personal injury lawsuits, including worker’s compensation, were the fourth largest at 14.5%. Another criticism is that all these lawsuits hurt American competitiveness This simply is not true. For example, foreign corporations that compete in the United States are subject to the same product liability laws that American corporations face. Some heads of American corporations have tried to blame their lack of innovation on American lawyers. Nice try guys, but I don’t think trial lawyers are making anyone buy Japanese products. Look behind the headlines. Look behind the sound bites. Remember that when you close the courthouse to one, you close it to all The courthouse is the protection of freedom of expression.
One of the constructive criticisms leveled at the justice system is that we need to devise alternative ways to resolve disputes. I was honored to work at the First Court of Appeals with Judge Frank Evans, who is considered the founder of Alternative Dispute Resolution in Texas. Through the efforts of Judge Evans and other committed lawyers and community leaders, Texas is one of the nation’s leaders in Alternative Dispute Resolution. ADR offers innovative ways to reduce costs and delays yet achieve a fair resolution of disputes. In Texas we’ve adopted what’s called the multidoor courthouse This allows cases in the civil docket to be referred to arbitration or mediation.
While our system isn`t perfect, it’s encouraging to note that we remain “the leading exporter” of constitutionalism, the judicial enforcement of rights, and alternative dispute resolution. Our legal institutions provide influential models for the governance of business transactions, the processing of disputes, and the protection of individual rights It also makes me proud to be a lawyer.

1 Quoted in Ruth Miller Elson, Guardians of Tradition: American Schoolbooks of the Nineteenth Century 26 (1964).
2 See e.g., Stephen B. Oates, With Malice Toward None: The Life of Abraham Lincoln 113 (1977) (Lincoln did his most influential legal work in Illinois Supreme Court where he earned his reputation as a lawyer’s lawyer, adept at meticulous preparation and cogent argument).
3 Austin Sarat & William L. F. Felstiner, Legal Realism in Lawyer-Client Communications (American Bar Foundation 1987).
4 ‘See Marc Galanter, Reading the Landscape of Disputes, 31 UCLA L.Rev.4, 3944(1983).
5 Id. at 39.
6 “Quoted in Eric L. Fredrickson, A Commitment to Public Service: The History of the Houston Bar Association(1992) 1.
7 12 Mark F. Grady, Torts: The Best Defense Against Regulation, Wall Street Journal, September 3, 1992, A11.