Mahoning lawyers avoid ghosts of Christmas past

Mahoning County lawyers are like the Little Drummer Boy this Christmas season -- they have no gifts to give. At least not to judges.
And that's a good thing.
For the second year in a row, the Mahoning County Bar Association has advised its members to confine their expressions of holiday cheer toward judges to greeting cards.
Past practice has involved the giving of liquor, candy and fruit baskets, which seem innocent enough. But they've also involved, according to a crooked lawyer caught up in the federal investigation of Mahoning Valley corruption, very expensive cigars and tickets to Steeler football games.
Wrong is wrong: And while we're not claiming there's a moral equivalence between accepting a $10 box of candy or thousands of dollars worth of football tickets, both are wrong.
The code of professional responsibility for law yers adopted by the Ohio Supreme Court 30 years ago is quite explicit: "A lawyer shall not give or lend any thing of value to a judge, official or employee of a tribunal."
That language does not leave very much wiggle room, and it makes no exceptions for the holidays.
The bar association sent reminders to judges not to accept gifts and to its members not to offer them. That may sound Scrooge-like, but to us it only makes sense.
The ghosts of past practice will haunt the Mahoning Valley for a long time. We see images of judges borrowing money and lawyers lending it, of crooked lawyers and crooked prosecutors colluding to set criminals free, of a judge rubbing his greedy hands together in anticipation of making big money by partnering up with a crooked lawyer. All those images survive.
Granted, those examples of corruption had nothing to do with the holidays. But the best way to begin to erase those images is through a zero-tolerance policy 365 days a year (366 in leap years).
All equal before the bar: Every person appearing in court is entitled to feel that his or her case will be decided on its merits, not on whether one of the lawyers in the courtroom gave the judge a bigger, better gift than the other lawyer last Christmas.