When Joseph L. Rawlins launched his Salt Lake law practice in 1875, it was a two-man firm.
When Randon W. Wilson joined the firm in 1966 - 91 years and eight name changes later - he became the eighth lawyer for the firm now called Jones, Waldo, Holbrook & McDonough.Today, 118 years after it was
launched, Jones Waldo has 65 lawyers and 85 support staff, ranking it fourth largest among firms based in Utah, with offices in Salt Lake City, St. George and Washington D.C. Wilson is its president.
As present and past Jones Waldo attorneys gathered for a 118th anniversary celebration Friday - held in conjunction with the 80th birthday (Nov. 6) of former Gov. Calvin L. Rampton, a Jones Waldo partner who still works part-time for the firm - Wilson reflected on the changes in the Salt Lake legal community.
"Back when I started, the largest firm in town was only 12 lawyers," said Wilson. "For the first 90 years or so, we never had more than four people. The growth really took off in the '70s and '80s - not just for us but for most of the firms in town."
Located for much of its history in the old Walker Building at 200 South and Main (it's now based across the street in the First Interstate Building) Jones Waldo traditionally represented "non-Mormon" clients: mining companies, the banking/retailing Walker brothers, The Salt Lake Tribune and other "gentile" interests.
"For much of our history we really represented clients who were the antithesis of the Mormon Church," said Wilson.
"The Walker Bros. Mercantile was in competition with ZCMI and we represented the Trib in opposition to the old Telegram and then the Deseret News. We did that right up to the point where we started to become more diversified and cosmopolitan, really about the time I started."
Wilson chuckles as he recalls that early in his career at Jones Waldo two LDS lawyers were hired. "Joe Jones, a senior partner, said one of our clients suggested maybe we were getting too many Mormons," he said.
But the "us-vs.-them" mentality had started fading as early as the 1950s, he said, when the firm helped get the Newspaper Preservation Act through Congress. The result was the nation's first joint operating agreement, or JOA, between competing newspapers, the News and the Tribune, and its operating entity Newspaper Agency Corp. There are now some two dozen JOAs nationwide.
The Newspaper Preservation Act is a symbol of their touching all bases, Wilson said. "Since that time, our firm now has developed a very broad mix of Mormon and non-Mormon clients and attorneys."
Wilson concedes that some remnants of the adversarial culture pop up from time to time, "but the old barriers are essentially gone. No one has minded for years that we represent someone they may think is in conflict with them."
Lawyers in general have taken a lot of abuse in recent years, but Wilson says he doesn't let it bother him. "As long as we conduct ourselves properly and do the best we can, it's best to just roll with the punches."
Besides, the legal profession can't be all that bad if so many students are willing to undertake the rigors of becoming lawyers. Wilson, though, does not encourage them.
"A lot of young people ask my advice about law school. I tell them they better want it bad and they better be top students. It's just too hard to find a job in the profession today. I told my two sons they ought to look elsewhere for a career. Four years of college and the bar exam is a big price to pay if you aren't going to get a good position, and only the top 10 percent of each class usually do."
For those who do run the gauntlet and get a position in a large firm, it's still not a road to riches, warns Wilson, not in Utah at any rate. It takes seven years to make partner at Jones Waldo, and that doesn't necessarily mean higher pay.
"It makes little difference financially to make partner," he said. "We have associate lawyers who make more than some shareholders because we have a complex pay structure based on productivity."