THURSDAY, December 22, 1994
By Bill Rankin
Staff Writer

Knoxville – It’s not what the American Bar Association would consider the quintessential course in trial practice. But J. D. Lee did it anyway, walking barefoot on burning coals outside a Chicago hotel.

Lee, 65, swears the stroll didn’t scorch his tender soles and says it has helped him become a better trial lawyer.

"It’s all part of putting yourself in a winning state," he said.

Over the past 40 years, Lee has been the king of torts in Tennessee, having tried more cases than any other lawyer. He is now one of the lead plaintiff’s lawyers in a sweeping attack on U.S. tobacco companies and holds the unique distinction of having brought – and lost – more lawsuits against the industry than any other lawyer in the country.

Success breeds controversy

Over the years, Less has successfully fended off an attempt by the Tennessee Bar Association to disbar him for his controversial views on advertising and legal fees and waged an unsuccessful 1978 campaign to unseat former U.S. Sen. Howard Baker.

On the one hand, he’s a throwback to the gentlemanly country lawyer. In a seersucker suit, he’s a Matlock clone who has confounded his trial adversaries with a string of lucrative courtroom victories and settlements.

On the other hand, Lee employs techniques that some lawyers would call, well, flaky.

For years, he has been one of the country’s leading promoters of "neuro-linguistic programming," a behavioral psychology that stresses the use of body language and voice tones to convey a message. It’s what led him to his trek across burning coals outside the Chicago Hilton in 1991.

Lee teaches linguistic programming at an annual seminar and says the reason he uses it is simple: "A lawyer’s business is in communication, for crying out loud… You can’t fool jurors. The lawyer who tries to do so is in the wrong business."

Members of the defense bar cannot dismiss his unusual tactics. He was the first lawyer in Tennessee to win jury verdicts of $100,0000, $500,000 and $1 million. In 1992, a Tennessee jury for the first time awarded $10 million to a Lee client in a wrongful death case.

For these reasons, he has few admirers in the medical community, whose members often find themselves on the receiving end of his malpractice suits.

"He’s one of the problems with the legal profession," grumbles Don Alexander, executive director of the Tennessee Medical Association. "It’s because of lawyers like him, we so badly need tort reform."

But consumer advocate Ralph Nader sees it differently

" He spends time end energy defending the right of people to have access to the courts," said Nader, who with Lee in 1981 co-founded a nonprofit foundation that provides funds and resources to plaintiff’s lawyers across the country. "He’s not just out to make a buck. He’s a legal statesman and does credit to the profession."

Tobacco industry a longtime target

Lee has been chasing his current target – the tobacco industry – for decades.

He will not tolerate anyone smoking in his presence and for years has actively campaigned against the industry, testifying before Congress and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

When Philip Morris balked at giving its annual pledge of $5,000 to the Knoxville Arts Council because of a city ban on indoor smoking, Lee made up the loss himself, two years running.

He is now one of 58 lawyers who have agreed to pitch in $50,000 apiece to be part of a proposed class-action lawsuit against U.S. tobacco companies in New Orleans.

"This will be a war," Lee said of the case. "It may be our best shot yet at finally winning a case against them."

When not flying his Beach Baron twin-engine aircraft to appear in courthouses across the South or riding horses at his North Carolina cabin, Lee practices law with his 35-year-old wife and 29-year-old son out of a renovated four-story building in downtown Knoxville,

Inside the building, which includes a hand-operated elevator and his penthouse living quarters, is his secret weapon: an almost life-size model of a courtroom adorned with English and French antiques. It’s here where Lee and his associates bring in people from the local unemployment office and pay them to hear a mock case and return a verdict.

"Lawyers don’t know the value of a lawsuit," he said.

The technique helps Lee decide whether to settle a case before trial. The results have been uncanny, he said, citing a recent case in which two mock juries returned verdicts averaging $1.3 million for his client. He took the case to trial and won a $1.5 million verdict.