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The
Power
of the
Poet
Leslie A. Gordon
48 WINTER 2006
T
o be good, a trial lawyer must combine the skills of
a priest, a poet, and a prizefighter, according to
Goodwin Proctor litigator Forrest Hainline. Not surprisingly, Hainline, a trial lawyer who has appeared before
the U.S. Supreme Court, has spent his lifetime acquiring
those skills: he studied theology at the University of
Notre Dame and poetry at SUNY Buffalo, and he’s
earned a third-degree black belt in the Japanese martial
art of aikido.
Combining those seemingly disparate talents, Hainline
has earned a reputation as a go-to lawyer in “crisis litigation.” Specializing in toxic torts, environmental law, antitrust, and media defense, Hainline has represented
Campbell Soup Company, Chevron, and Del Monte. Recently, he defended major canned tuna manufacturers in
a case related to warnings for mercury in tuna brought by
the California attorney general under Proposition 65.
Hainline’s love for poetry began “when I first learned
to read,” he explains. “My mother read Irish poetry to
me as a baby, and she encouraged me to read and write.
Later, a professor at SUNY Buffalo told me I should remember poems. I still believe you need to read poems
out loud and memorize them.” Hainline is drawn to “the
power a poet can put in such a small space, which is
probably why I’ve gotten into haiku,” he says, referring
to the poetic form that allows seventeen syllables. Here
are three examples of his work:
Fog
Blessed damp dense fog
Comforting compress for a
Soul seared by living
Coffee
Morning half awake
I smell coffee’s welcome. First
Sip. First Sacrament.
Light
Sun just low enough
To shine beneath my bill cap
Morning light, bring peace
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Photo: Jim Block
Hopkins in a closing argument: “‘The Holy Ghost
broods over the bent world with warm breath and
with, ah, bright wings,’” Hainline began. “And over this
case, preemption and due process brood and affect every
part of it.”
He has similarly used biblical quotes in trial and once
charmed a judge by reciting James Joyce. “People think
analogically before they think logically,” Hainline explains about using poetry in litigation. “People respond
to metaphors. I can get people to move with rhythm, visually and with the cadence of speech. They’ll agree with
you. Poetry teaches you how to do this.”
A client since 1994, Faith Greenfield, chief litigation
counsel at Campbell Soup Company, says Hainline’s
“creativity in approaching cases and case strategy sets
him apart from many other attorneys, and, I believe, his
creativity comes in part from his study of literature, including poetry.” Greenfield is on Hainline’s poetry email
distribution list, which, she says, “provides an excuse for
a break in my day. He selects poetry with many different
50 WINTER 2006
themes, but they always seem to have relevance to current events, the legal profession, or issues that arise in
my daily life. I have also read some of Forrest’s own poetry, which I enjoy.”
The oldest of seven children born to Irish Catholic
parents, Hainline grew up in Detroit where his father
served as general counsel of American Motors. He was
named for a maternal relative whose last name was Forrest, a confederate general in the Civil War and an original Ku Klux Klan member who later became an ardent
integrationist. On his father’s side, an early Hainline rode
with Daniel Boone.
While studying at Notre Dame, SUNY Buffalo, and the
University of Michigan Law School, Hainline took up
acting, participating in professional summer stock and
working in TV commercials. After law school in 1974, he
moved west to practice law at Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison in San Francisco. There, he first-chaired an antitrust trial during just his fourth year as a lawyer. He
later moved to Washington, D.C., to be closer to family,
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Photo: Jim Block
Hainline says he thinks about poems every day and actually sits down to write weekly. “I play around with concepts. I then go back and revisit poems and ‘sandpaper’
them,” he adds about the revision process. Several of his
poems have been published, but Hainline submits “very
little” to journals.
“I do believe, though, a poet should have an audience,”
he adds. “And I want to convert people to the power and
beauty of poetry.” To that end, about once a week he
sends along poems of his own and of his favorite poets
by email. He started the email distribution more than ten
years ago, and the recipient list has grown to include several thousand people, including law firm lawyers, general
counsels, architects, theologians, investment advisors,
professors, and legal recruiters, among others. Even the
busiest recipients respond, quoting back their favorite
lines of that installment’s poem or telling Hainline how
the poem related to something in their lives at that time.
Hainline’s personal favorite poems include Gerard Manley Hopkins’s “God’s Grandeur,” Robert Daseler’s
“Whispers Late at Night,” and e. e. cummings’s “i thank
you God for most this amazing . . .” To find new favorites, Hainline regularly reads online journals like Poetry Daily (www.poems.com) and Verse Daily
(www.versedaily.org) as well as collections by Yeats,
Robert Creeley (under whom he studied at SUNY Buffalo), Hopkins, Mary Oliver, and Shakespeare. He also
reads novels and theology books.
Theology is a frequent theme in his own writing. “I’m
interested in the presence of the sacred,” Hainline explains. “The painful confrontation with the God, the sacred that we articulate, the way in which the experience
of the sacred can become ugly and life-destroying as
people begin to articulate the sacred experience.” That
thought process inspired this Hainline creation:
No God But God
God of suicide
Bombers blowing up children
This god is not God
Poetry has seeped into Hainline’s legal work too. He
quoted, for example, the Irish Jesuit poet Gerard Manley
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especially his father who had suffered a heart attack.
Known as a “samurai lawyer,” Hainline gets into cases
late in the game, after summary judgment and settlement
talks have failed, and he has tried cases all over the country. He returned to San Francisco a few years ago.
Michael Gelb, author of How to Think Like Leonardo da
Vinci: Seven Steps to Genius Every Day, has known Hainline
for almost twenty years. “He has a rare ability to convince an audience via logical argument while also capturing their imagination through poetic references,” says
Gelb, who is on Hainline’s email distribution list.
Fulfilling the final component in Hainline’s recipe for
trial lawyering, he has practiced the martial art of aikido
for decades, earning a third-degree black belt. According
to Gelb, “Forrest is a high-ranking martial artist, but unlike many experienced practitioners, he is always open to
new learning. He has an unusual ability to suspend his
ego and consider a situation with relative objectivity.”
Hainline believes that along with his theological studies
and his love of poetry, martial arts has enhanced his
lawyering. “It’s spiritual training,” Hainline explains. “It
helps with centering and provides a way of looking at
the world—specifically, turning the bad into good.”
Fall
Brinded leaves falling
Dazzle and leaf mold mingle
Each has its office
Reluctant Sunrise
Mist shrouds the morning
In sepulchral gray. Sunrise
Hidden. Reluctant.
Emptiness
Emptiness binds us
Without the empty spaces
We are locked apart
Between
The thought between thoughts.
The breath between breaths. The life
Between birth and death.
San Francisco Angelus
At six the winds rise
Snapping flags, holding sails taut
Nature’s angelus
Advent
Anticipation
Your imagination is
You are what you dream
The poems in this article are copyright © 2002–2006 by Forrest A. Hainline III.
THE BAR ASSOCIATION OF SAN FRANCISCO SAN FRANCISCO ATTORNEY 51