Editor’s Note: The following was submitted by The Lawyers Roundtable
The Lawyers Roundtable is forming its next Los Angeles chapter: one attorney per practice area, eleven facilitated luncheons a year, and one rule above the rest. Come to think, not to pitch.
In 1727, Benjamin Franklin gathered a group of Philadelphia printers, cabinetmakers, shoemakers and surveyors to meet every Friday. He called it the Junto. Debate, Franklin later wrote, was to be conducted “in the sincere spirit of inquiry after truth, without fondness for dispute or desire of victory.” Members who stated opinions too positively paid small fines. From those evenings came the Library Company of Philadelphia, and Franklin’s circle went on to give the city its first volunteer fire company.
A few decades earlier in London, merchants and ship captains had been trading news over coffee at Edward Lloyd’s coffeehouse. That table became Lloyd’s of London, which is still one of the world’s great insurance markets. The porters who greet visitors at its reception desk are still called waiters.
Neither began as an institution. Both began as rooms where people with different expertise were expected to say what they saw.
The Lawyers Roundtable is building that room for Los Angeles County. Each private chapter is carefully composed, with one attorney selected to hold the seat for each practice area. Holding that seat carries a responsibility: to contribute the perspective of that discipline and remain open to what the others reveal.
John W. Fagerholm, Esq., founder of DefendMyBiz, which defends California employers, puts it in terms of the ring:
“I started out as an entrepreneur who got sued by an employee. Twenty-five years of defending employers taught me that every fighter needs a sparring partner who won’t pull their punches. The attorneys I value most see what I’ve missed and tell me straight. That’s The Lawyers Roundtable: a room of accomplished practitioners who ask sharp questions and push back. The quality of your thinking is shaped by the people willing to spar with you.”
That willingness defines who belongs. Accomplishment alone doesn’t earn a seat. The attorney who holds one must welcome being questioned and question others with the same respect. Members challenge the argument, not the person.
The chapter meets for eleven professionally facilitated luncheons a year, and each follows the same rhythm. It opens with a question: What are you seeing? Members surface developments from their practices and industries. The facilitator then puts the most consequential issue on the table first, not necessarily the loudest or the most urgent, and the room works it across disciplines. The objective is not consensus. It is clarity.
Before anyone leaves, the room asks two more questions. What do we know now that we did not know when we walked in? What happens because we were here? Each member names a specific next step and brings it back to the next luncheon. The format repeats. The value compounds.
The rules say the rest. Nothing is recorded. The room holds what the room hears. Solicitation is prohibited. Members arrive prepared and speak with candor. The quality of the room belongs to everyone in it.
Franklin’s Junto set out to improve its members, and Philadelphia got a library and a fire company out of it. Los Angeles attorneys shape how this county does business, settles disputes and governs itself. What’s said around the table stays there. The judgment members sharpen there travels with them.
Attorneys interested in being considered for a seat can submit a request at thelawyersroundtable.com.
