William Tauzin: “I am a former trial lawyer. I still hold a law degree. Let me also disabuse you all of a notion: This House is not…”

“I am a former trial lawyer. I still hold a law degree. Let me also disabuse you all of a notion: This House is not composed of a majority of lawyers. Only 170 Members of this House admit or believe they have a law degree; 435 Members, 170, that means three-fifths of this House are not lawyers. That surprises most people. They think it is the other way around. Many of the lawyers in this House rise as I do today in support of these commonsense legal reforms, and it is to the lawyers in the House I want to speak for a minute. We have a responsibility to the legal profession. We were educated in it. Many of us practiced in it. Our obligation is to make sure that it is a good profession, that it works well, that justice arises out of it. And when the law and when the practice of the law is such that it encourages frivolous lawsuits, that it encourages the pursuit of deep-pocket defendants instead of responsible parties, when it does not make people personally responsible for their own actions, as this bill does when it says if you are drunk or on drugs and you have an accident and that is the real cause of the injury you ought not be able to sue someone and collect, when we in this body are prepared to write commonsense legal reform, lawyers ought to be the first ones to rise and say we are prepared to do it.”