For this edition of the leadership program spotlight, we
will focus on the Konduros Leadership Development Program at the University of
South Carolina School of Law.
Now in its fifth year, the Konduros Leadership Development
Program was created following a gift from Jim Konduros, a 1954 alumnus of the
law school with a distinguished career in both law and state government. The program starts with an application
process in the fall, followed by a series of leadership sessions occurring in
the spring. For 2020, the program
extends from January to March and features eleven sessions covering topics such
as handling a crisis, ethical leadership, and emotional intelligence.
Jan Baker, Assistant Director of Legal Writing at the law
school, directs the Konduros Program.
Baker reports that applications for this year’s leadership class
exceeded the number of applications from prior years. From nearly forty applicants, sixteen
students were selected to participate this year. “We look for well-rounded students,” Baker
noted. “We were interested in seating a
diverse class that included a good mix of second and third-year students. It was important to us to bring students to
the table who have different back stories.
Their diverse backgrounds, academic interests, life experiences, and
personalities have made this year’s leadership class exceptional in every
respect.”
The Leadership Program is organized into weekly
sessions. Each week, students meet with
attorneys and other community leaders to discuss different leadership
principles. Students begin with a
communications workshop that teaches them how to communicate complex material
and difficult subjects to varied audiences.
Students also work on a case study involving a law firm crisis in which
the students take on the roles of the partners in the firm and work to figure
out how they will respond to the crisis to make sure their practice, their
clients, and their employees weather the storm.
Over the course of the program, students engage in a number
of personal assessments. So far, they
have completed a True Colors Assessment, a Team Player Assessment, and a
Workplace Leadership Assessment. Baker
described the assessment process as both revealing and entertaining: “It has been entertaining to watch the
students process their assessment results – some of them have been quite
surprised when their assessment results reveal positive leadership-oriented
attributes that they did not self-identify.”
The capstone project for the Leadership Program is a
leadership initiative project. In their
first meeting, students are organized into small groups based on their True
Colors Assessment. Each group is
responsible for identifying a local societal problem, working to create a plan
to resolve the problem, and presenting their project results at the conclusion
of the program in March. This year,
students will be working with local agencies to distribute resource packets to
the city’s homeless population, organizing a lending closet for law students
who need to borrow professional attire for job interviews, working with the law
school’s Pro Bono Program to catalog legal resources for rural communities, and
working to create a partnership between non-profits and state agencies to
repurpose building materials to be used in skills training programs in juvenile
detention facilities.
“I can’t say enough good things about these students,” Baker
said. “The Leadership Program is not
offered for academic credit – these students volunteer to participate in this
semester-long program because they are interested in readying themselves for
service and leadership. Their dedication
is both impressive and inspiring. I look
forward to seeing what they will accomplish in their careers and in their
communities.”
For more information on the Konduros Leadership Development
Program and the 2020 Program, visit the following:
I hope you are having a fabulous fall! We have a lot happening
in the next weeks and months and we hope you will join us for all that you can.
In this newsletter you will find information for the following upcoming events,
including 2 this week:
“What LSSSE Data Can Teach Us…” Webinar on November 5, presented by the Law School Survey of Student Engagement. Register by emailing [email protected].
AALS Annual Meeting breakfast and program in Washington, D.C. on January 3, 2020.
2020: Vision for Leadership Conference in Waco, Texas, at Baylor Law on March 26-27, 2020.
We want to thank each of you for your ongoing interest in, and
work on, efforts to better prepare our students for the opportunities to make a
positive difference in society using their legal training and law degrees.
Momentum is building in legal education! Each month we gain new members to our
Leadership section and we discover new information about more leadership
development programs and courses around the country. The continued growth is
reported in an article to be published soon in a special leadership symposium
issue of the Tennessee Law Review. We are now aware of at least 85 law
schools that have at least one leadership development program, course or
designation for their students. Included as an appendix to the article will be
a chart listing the mission statements of all ABA-approved law schools.
Highlighted are 91 of those law school mission statements that specifically use
the words “lead,” “leader(s)” or “leadership.” That chart also includes
learning outcomes with indications of leadership as a learning objective. This
chart not only documents the growth of leadership development programming but
provides resources for those seeking to create new courses and programs and to
enhance existing programming.
We have much to celebrate but we also know much more needs to be
done. As a section, we need to continue to find ways to support each other and
to help others interested in creating or expanding leadership development.
Please join us at our section breakfast on January 3 in Washington, D.C. to
discuss our future efforts. Register for the AALS annual meeting by November 14
to receive best pricing.
In this newsletter we continue our highlight of leadership
courses and programs by featuring programs at University of North Carolina
School of Law and Washburn University School of Law. Please let us know about
your new courses and other ventures and enhancements to your leadership
programs.
November 5, 2019, at 10:00 am Pacific/12:00 pm Central/ 1:00 pm
Eastern
Presented by Chad Christensen, Ph.D., Law School Survey of
Student Engagement (LSSSE) Project Manager Research Faculty, School of
Education, Indiana University
As established by a number of studies and reports spanning the
last twenty-plus years, law schools need to expand educational programming
beyond the traditional primary focus on intellectual training to better prepare
students for their professional obligations and leadership opportunities. A
commitment to leadership development efforts in law schools not only benefits
law students but also is essential for the future the legal profession and the
preservation of the rule of law in our society. To promote scholarship,
teaching, and other activities focused on equipping lawyers and law students for
effective leadership and service, the AALS Section on Leadership was
established in 2018.
This webinar will utilize LSSSE data to explore opportunities
for leadership development in legal education. Dr. Chad Christensen, LSSSE
Project Manager, will share key survey findings with a focus on maximizing
leadership skills along various metrics, including teamwork, intrinsic
motivation, and professionalism. Participants need not be familiar with LSSSE,
quantitative data, or curricular development. Join us as we facilitate a
discussion on how to more effectively build leaders in law school and beyond.
To participate in the webinar, RSVP by email to [email protected].
You will receive log-in instructions once you are signed up.
For a change of pace in this edition of the spotlight
section, we will be looking at leadership courses at two schools to get a feel
for how others are treating the topic of leadership in the classroom.
The University of North Carolina School of Law offers Leadership
for Lawyers in the fall semester and has been doing so since 2014. This is a three-credit course which meets
once a week for three hours. According
to the course description, topics for the course include “adjusting leadership
styles based on context, seeking and providing mentorship, cultivating and
managing diverse teams, resolving conflict, strategic planning and goal
setting, delegating tasks, and managing programs, projects and events.” While there are no prerequisites for the
course, permission is required for enrollment to confirm students have
leadership experience in their background.
The current instructors for the course are John Kasprzak, Assistant
Dean for Student Development, and Jared Smith, Programming and Engagement
Associate, NC Equal Access to Justice Commission. Additional information on the Leadership
for Lawyers course at UNC Law can be found at http://www.law.unc.edu/academics/courses/leadership/.
Washburn University School of Law also offers a course
entitled Leadership for Lawyers, with the class first offered in the
Spring of 2018. The Washburn version is
a two-credit course also meeting once a week.
For the first iteration, the class was capped at 30 students and was at
capacity within the first few hours of registration. Leadership for Lawyers covered many of
the same topics as the UNC Law version, with additional topics including HR
issues, different generations in the law firm setting, and succession
planning. Assessment came in the form of
case study write ups with an additional assignment involving a service
project. For the service project,
students were asked to pick a non-profit organization and either describe their
volunteer efforts for the organization or create a hypothetical event to help
market the organization.
Thomas Sneed, Associate Professor and Director of the Law Library,
was the instructor and plans to continue to offer the course in future Spring
semesters. Additional information on the
Leadership for Lawyers course at Washburn Law can be found at http://washburnlaw.edu/academics/courses/k-m.html.
We hope you all
had a productive spring term and are in the middle of exciting and fun summer
plans before turning your attention to the fall. Thank you for staying in touch
with us!
In this newsletter are highlights from the inspiring and informative conference at University of Tennessee. Our heart-felt thanks again to Doug Blaze and his gracious team for their superb job of hosting!
Other news we wanted to share with you: .
A Call for Papers and Program Announcements for the 2020 AALS Annual meeting
Invitation to Leading Differently Through Difference Conference at Hofstra University
Follow-up Articles from the Conference at the University of Tennessee
I want to pick up
on something that Dean Blaze said in the closing session of the UT leadership
conference as he and Deborah Rhode recounted some recurring themes. “This conference was preaching to the choir,” he said. He was
right! He encouraged us to work together to expand our numbers and our
influence. Again, he was right! And we should do so, but not just for our own
gratification or because we think teaching “soft skills” to the millennials and
Gen Z students is more necessary than it was for previous generations. The
legal profession needs all of us in legal education to better prepare our
students for the challenges they will face as they enter the workforce. We know
leadership development programming does that.
Even more important than the need to better equip our
graduates for their own success after graduation is the need to help them
understand and embrace our obligation as lawyers to serve society. Our students
need to know that their professional obligation does not end with their clients.
From the Preamble of the ABA Model Rules
of Professional Conduct, “A lawyer is a representative of clients, an officer of the legal system and a public citizen having special responsibility for the quality of
justice… Lawyers play a vital
role in the preservation of society.” Leadership training can instill in
our students a sense of obligation to serve and opportunity to make a
difference.
Also discussed during the conference was the need to establish
a “whole building” approach to leadership development with everyone playing a
role – from deans and tenured faculty to clinicians and professional staff. To
make that a reality, we need to help our colleagues see not only the value to
our students and the profession but also to our nation. Most will readily agree
that society is in desperate need of more leaders who are trained in analyzing
complex issues, problem solving, civil discourse, conflict resolution, active
listening and negotiation. We, of course, need to make sure our students not
only have those skills but also are committed to establishing their reputations
built on integrity, competency and diligence. Our country needs us.
Our students come to us we the desire to use their legal
training and law degree for good – to make a difference. Law schools need to
feed that desire, not kill it and replace it with a purview of lawyers as hired
guns driven by profit to commoditize legal services. Don’t get me wrong – we
need to help our students to be successful financially in order to pay off
those large student debts. However, we know from Professor Larry Kreiger’s work
that lawyers’ happiness and well-being are not the result of external success
factors (money, position) but rather from internal factors such as a sense of
purpose and human connection.
We have the opportunity to impact the future success and
well-being of our students by being more intentional about developing them as
leaders. We have an obligation to insure our graduates recognize the legal
profession’s duty as guardians of our system of democracy. We have the
opportunity to help our profession navigate the transition from the role
lawyers played in society during the last two decades to what our role will be
in the next.
Returning to themes of the UT leadership conference, we need
to collaborate more, to inspire innovation and to support one another through
the ups and downs of this effort to firmly establish leadership development as
a fundamental aspect of legal education. Together we are building the
foundation for leadership development for law students and lawyers.
Our country IS experiencing a leadership gap. We should be
the profession to help fill it! Our students want to be part of the solution.
Let’s provide the skills, knowledge and resources for them to do so.
Please join us by sharing with us your new courses, programs
and other activities, by sending us other ideas for activities for the section,
and by attending the next gatherings:
November 8, 2019 • Hofstra Law • New York, NY
January 2-5, 2020 • AALS Annual Meeting • Washington, D.C.
Learning from Lawyer-Leaders Throughout the Profession • Fri. Jan. 3, 2020, @ 1:30pm
As more and more law students and lawyers find themselves holding positions other than in law firms, law schools must prepare our students for a wide variety of leadership roles they might play in both the public and private sector. Lawyers, through their legal education and training, are especially needed to lead in these challenging times. The 2020 Section on Leadership’s program will feature conversations with lawyers who serve in a variety of roles, including government, public interest, judiciary and professional associations. The panel will discuss the need for law schools to better equip law students for the challenges they will face as leaders in an ever-increasingly complex and challenging world.
Scheduled panelists:
Hon. Cheri Beasley, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the State of North Carolina
Judy Perry Martinez, President, American Bar Association
Anthony Thompson, Professor of Clinical Law, NYU School of Law and author, “Dangerous Leaders: How & Why Lawyers Must be Taught to Lead”
CALL FOR PAPERS
The Section on Leadership is pleased to announce a Call for Papers from which one additional presenter will be selected for the section’s program, “Learning from Lawyer-Leaders Throughout the Profession,” to be held during the AALS 2020 Annual Meeting in Washington on Friday, January 3, 2020 at 1:30pm.
For more information and to submit, view the Call for Papers, here.
Programs Co-Sponsored by the AALS Section on Leadership
Pro Bono and Public Service Opportunities Section • Sat. Jan. 4, 2020, @ 8:30am
This all-star panel will discuss the funding issues facing organizations such as the Legal Services Corporation and state Access to Justice Commissions, how this impacts pro bono and access to justice issues, how pro bono is effective at closing the access to justice gap, and what law schools can be doing to help.
Scheduled panelists:
Betty Balli Torres, Executive Director of the Texas Access to Justice Foundation
David Bienvenu, Chair of the ABA Standing Committee on Pro Bono and Public Service
Darcy Meals, Assistant Director of Center for Access to Justice at Georgia State University College of Law
Jim Sandman, President of the Legal Services Corporation
This panel will be moderated by Baylor Law’s Assistant Dean Stephen Rispoli, recipient of the State Bar of Texas 2019 Pro Bono Coordinator Award.
Pro Bono and Public Service: Pillars of Democracy and the Legal Profession
Lawyers have an obligation to uphold the rule of law and be the guardians of our legal system and society. Pro bono and public service are essential elements to the profession remaining a profession – helping those who cannot help themselves. These historical roles of the lawyer have been critical in protecting our society through cases for individual clients, serving as advisors for non-profit organizations, or serving in public office. Moreover, this service is not just good for clients and society, it is also good for the lawyer doing it.
However, these traditional roles face modern challenges. This session will discuss funding issues that the Legal Services Corporation and state Access to Justice Commissions face, how defunding them may affect pro bono around the country, and how legal education can help. Finally, this session will provide some practical tips and sample programs that attendees can implement at their home schools.
AALS Section on the Empirical Study of Legal Education and the Legal Profession: An Empirical Look: How Well Are We Preparing Law Students to Become Ethical Leaders Who Serve Others • Thurs., Jan. 2, 2020 @ 2pm
This panel will feature research conducted on the ways in which law schools provide law students with skills and competencies, and encourage values that are central to leadership, public service, ethical conduct, and fulfilling responsibilities to others. Moreover, we envision that the panel will discuss newly emerging empirical research, often building on prior efforts, which focuses on the interest of law students in public service when applying to law school, and the impact of experiences such as clinical training, and pro bono and public interest opportunities within law school, on the leadership and public service that legal professionals undertake within our communities. Finally, we will highlight work that informs our understanding of the changing nature of leadership roles undertaken by lawyers both in government and the private sector.
The Freedman Institute for the Study of Legal Ethics in conjunction with NYU School of Law, Columbia Law School, other law schools and law firms will sponsor a one day conference addressing the need for law schools to train lawyers to be leaders, specifically to focus upon equity and inclusion as essential to leadership training.
The legal profession and law schools exist in
a time of profound changes in the culture and in lawyering across various
fields. This conference asks and seeks to provide answers to: how do we promote
Leadership Training in Law Schools in a more inclusive and forward- thinking
manner? How does the profession and the academy confront the need to develop
cultural competence, deal with gender, race, and other identities affecting
full participation, and address generational differences? Why have we not done
better in equity and inclusion? These questions call for navigating a set of
tensions that must be addressed as part of both lawyer-leadership development
generally and building the capacity to navigate across difference. Law may be
reactive, but leadership is proactive. Lawyers learn to be risk averse, but
leadership requires risk-taking. These, among the many tensions of legal
training, present profound challenges to a profession that must drill down to
learn to promote skills, and competencies necessary to enable the next
generation to confront the challenges facing the profession and the democracy.
National
and locally recognized leaders in law and in business will participate on
various panels throughout the day. This
includes leaders in law firms and non-profit organizations, federal and state
judges, government lawyers, academics, and business leaders. The conference
will produce materials for law school curricula as well as volume of the law
review dedicated to advancing the research on leadership theory and experience.
Participants
include national leaders in the field including the Law Professors Leaders who
are on the Planning Committee and have authored books, articles and training
materials about these issues:
A summary of some of the key points at a presentation at a Conference on Leadership Development for Lawyers: Increasing our Impact, Roundtable on Leadership Development at the University of Tennessee College of Law, April 4-5, 2019
Psychology
has long involved the study of how to help people in emotional difficulty get
better, but more recently research out of the field of positive psychology has
turned to how to help people flourish, focusing not only on getting well, but being
well.
Indeed, a recent ABA report argued that well-being should be considered part of the lawyer’s duty of professional competence, which is even more important when lawyers act in leadership roles where they need to be at their best. 3
Unfortunately, that is not always the case. A 2016 study conducted by the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation and the ABA Commission on Lawyer Assistance Programs found that a third of practicing U.S. attorneys are problem drinkers; 28% of lawyers struggle with depression; and 19% demonstrate symptoms of anxiety.4 The 2016 Survey of Law Student Well-Being suggests that these problems may originate in law school, where nearly half of those law students surveyed admitted to regular binge drinking, 17% of respondents screened positive for depression, and more than one-third were diagnosed with anxiety.5
How
can those of us in leadership development respond to these statistics?
While it is important to acknowledge the problem and seek ways for those that need counseling help to get it, we can also look for ways to enhance lawyer and law student well-being.
Dr. Martin Seligman, former President of the American Psychological Association, has articulated five dimensions of well-being in his book Flourish, which he called PERMA, shorthand for Positive Emotions; Engagement; Positive Relationships; Meaning; and Achievement.6
We
each teach courses at our law schools which draw on this framework, and if you
are interested in ways to get started in your own courses, here are three
topics and related exercises which can help enhance the PERMA elements of wellbeing
for law students.
1. Cultivate an attitude
of gratitude.
Ask students to keep a journal each day for three weeks recording three things/events/people for which they are grateful and consider how they contributed to each item listed. Research indicates this exercise may help provide a balanced perspective and prompt students to begin looking for good things that they encounter every day (thereby increasing their positive-to-negative ratio of emotions).7
2. Celebrate with good
news shared.
Suppose
a law student excitedly tells a friend, “I just got a clerkship!” There are
four possible responses the student might receive: (a) “Oh, that’s nice.” (b)
“You know those jobs do not pay well. How will you afford to take it with your
student loans?” (c) “Did I tell you about the time I was a clerk?” and (d)
“Congratulations! You must feel great!”
If a client told us good news, many of us might instinctively go to the second response to point out the pitfalls, but that is likely to be suboptimal in other relationships – like with a friend or a spouse – where research indicates that an “active constructive” response, like (d), works much better.8
3.
Remember your strengths and your purpose.
A recent Gallup survey showed that American workers gained a boost in positive emotions and energy the more they used their strengths.9 Law students and lawyers can do the same so long as they are aware of their strengths. One way to begin is to ask them to write a short story (or positive introduction) about when they were at their best. Then ask them to share their stories with their classmates and ask the classmates to listen for the strengths that they display. They can complement these insights with a free character strengths questionnaire available at www.viacharacter.org, and then explicitly consider ways that they could use their top strengths to excel in law school or law practice.10 You can also ask students to prepare a “strengths resume” where they recall specific examples of how they have used their strengths well in the past.11
Finally, it is helpful to remind students about the sense of purpose that brought them into the law and a leadership role. Knowing the why, to paraphrase psychologist Viktor Frankl quoting Frederick Nietzche, can help make the how worthwhile.12
For more information, please see the endnotes below or contact the authors about their courses.
By Doug Blaze, The University of Tennessee College of Law
In April, the Institute for Professional Leadership at the University of Tennessee hosted a major conference on leadership education, co-sponsored by the AALS Section on Leadership and the Tennessee Journal of Law and Policy. The two-day roundtable, Leadership Development for Lawyers: Increasing Our Impact, attracted well over a hundred participants including legal educators from twenty-four law schools, judges, lawyers, and law students.
Designed to promote robust discussion and exchange of ideas, the success of the event reflected over a year of hard work by the planning committee consisting of Deborah Rhode, Lou Bilionis, Leah Jackson Teague, David Gibbs, Buck Lewis, Don Polden, and Doug Blaze. A remarkable team of law students led by Charlotte Houser, the 2019 Hardwick-Woods fellow in the leadership institute, assisted the planning team by ensuring that the entire event ran smoothly.
The opening
afternoon featured four workshops designed to enhance existing leadership
courses and programs and to assist schools newly interested in leadership
development efforts. Topics included A
Whole Building Approach to Leadership Development, Integrating Well-Being into
Leadership curricula, Designing Effective Leadership Skill Development
Exercises, and Getting a Leadership Course Started.
The
workshops were followed by a welcome dinner highlighted by a keynote address
from ABA President Bob Carlson.
President Carlson emphasized that lawyers need to provide
leadership now more than ever. He noted,
“our institutions are strong,
but they are not invincible. They require the support and protection of each
and every one of us to endure.”
Keynote
remarks by Cheri Beasley, Chief Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court and
Tennessee Law alumna, kicked off the second day of the conference. Chief Justice Beasley applauded the work of
all the attendees to develop future leaders while challenging everyone to
rethink what we mean by diversity and inclusion. She also emphasized that our pipeline efforts
need to begin far earlier than they do now.
Following
Chief Justice Beasley’s remarks, the morning session provided insights from
three perspectives: legal educators, the
profession, and law students. The first
panel discussion, moderated by Leah Teague, provided an overview of existing law
school leadership development efforts.
Professor Susan Sturm (Columbia), Dean Gordon Smith (BYU), and Dean
Garry Jenkins (Minnesota) described their innovative work and shared their thoughts
about what had proved most effective.
Turning from
leadership development in law schools to the profession, Don Polden assembled
an impressive panel to talk about what the profession is, or should be doing,
to develop effective lawyer leaders.
Buck Lewis and David Gibbs shared their thoughts based on leadership
work in both law schools and the profession.
Loreen Schaefer, a former General Counsel of GE Transportation, shared
her insights from the in-house perspective.
The final panelist was Professor Tony Thompson (NYU), author of the
recently published book – Dangerous Leaders: How & Why Lawyers Must Be Taught to Lead – who talked
about the five components of leadership focusing particularly on race and
inequality. A panel of law students and
recent graduates from Tennessee, Santa Clara, and Cincinnati law schools,
moderated by Chris Davis (Tennessee ’19), concluded the morning by presenting
very thoughtful comments on what the students found to have been the most
effective in enhancing their leadership development.
An underlying theme that developed during the conference was
how to address equity and inclusion issues in leadership training. The final
panel further developed the importance of these issues. Moderated by Paula
Schaefer (Tennessee), the impressive panel included LSAC President Kellye
Testy, Professor Jane Aiken (Georgetown and incoming dean at Wake Forest),
Judge Deborah Stevens (Knox County, TN), Dean Mark Alexander (Villanova), and
Veta Richardson (CEO of Association of Corporate Counsel). The insightful comments from the panelists,
coupled with the robust discussion following, was one of conference highlights.
Deborah Rhode, the moving force behind the section and our
first chair, was joined by Doug Blaze to lead the all the participants in a
discussion about “where do we go from here.”
Deborah spoke eloquently about the impact, or legacy, of our collective
effort to develop lawyer leaders capable of providing need leadership in these
turbulent times. The ensuing discussion
identified at least three other important themes. First, the group agreed that a focus on
experiential leadership skills development is critical. Second, and building on an earlier workshop, our
work needs to play a key role in addressing the well-being challenges faced by
students and lawyers. Third, the discussion
underscored the need to develop effective assessment tools to evaluate the
efficacy of all of our work in an effort to increase our impact.
Finally, the everyone agreed that these conversations needs to continue. The good news is that two future conferences are already scheduled – Hofstra in November and Baylor next spring – to ensure that happens. In addition, articles by a number of presenters will be forthcoming later this year in an issue of the Tennessee Journal of Law and policy. For those that were unable to attend, conference materials remain available, here.
by Bob Carlson, President, American Bar Association
It is a
tremendous honor to lead the American Bar Association, and it has been a joy to
serve the organized bar thanks to the many hundreds of bright, dedicated people
with whom I’ve worked during this journey.
Friendship through service leadership is the best kind of friendship there is. Together in the bar, we call attention to the legal needs in our communities, and we call public attention to the value of lawyers. Last October, for example, legal communities across the country during the National Celebration of Pro Bono collectively shined a proud spotlight on more than 1,400 events, hosted by more than 700 organizations, from all 50 states, D.C., Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Canada, and even Hong Kong.
Activities
during the National Celebration of Pro Bono highlighted the continued need for
pro bono services on behalf of veterans, the elderly, domestic violence
survivors, people who are homeless, and others who need a lawyer’s help,
including this year’s focus, disaster survivors.
In addition to
the valuable service to clients these activities provide, they can also be the
impetus for lasting relationships and friendships among lawyers that service in
the bar fosters.
With the
National Celebration of Pro Bono, we stand together as a unified voice for the
values that our profession is rightfully proud of. We need your support—every
lawyer’s support—in such efforts, so I encourage you to join us in October 2019
and future celebrations.
Another opportunity for lawyers to support pro bono is Free Legal Answers, which conveniently enables low-income people who submit civil justice questions for pro bono lawyers to answer. Nearly 60,000 client questions have been posted to Free Legal Answers since its launch in 2016, and more than 5,700 lawyers across the country are registered to volunteer to answer them. Anyone who is licensed to practice in one of the 40 or so jurisdictions that have adopted Free Legal Answers can sign up at abafreelegalanswers.org.
With our leadership on disaster legal services, the ABA demonstrates that we are an important part of the American fabric as well as an essential part of the lives and livelihoods of every single lawyer, every single day—whether it’s through our Model Rules of Professional Conduct, our accreditation of law schools, our governmental advocacy, and so many other aspects of the legal profession and justice system.
Our House of Delegates, which sets ABA policy, consists of 596 members from across the United States. A majority of our delegates proportionately represent state and local bar associations from every state and the District of Columbia, plus most territories.
The balance of delegates
represent ABA sections, divisions, and forums—including the Section of Legal
Education and Admissions to the Bar and our Law Student Division–along with other
bar and legal associations, including the Association of American Law Schools.
Through endeavors
that only the ABA carries out, we represent lawyers well beyond our more than
400,000 members. If you consider all the lawyers who belong to the multitude of
bar associations and other organizations that send representatives to our House
of Delegates, the ABA speaks for more than a million lawyers across the
country. Our voice for the profession is an undeniable and indispensable part
of America’s culture of justice.
The ABA’s democratic,
representative structure—embodying the best of diverse and inclusive
institutions— ensures that our policies are rooted not in partisan politics,
not in narrow political ideology, but in the values that lawyers across America
share.
The participation
and involvement of our members fortifies the ABA’s united and respected voice
of the profession—a voice that stands for professional excellence, for equal
justice, for due process, and for our liberties protected by the rule of law.
We share values
as lawyers no matter where we’re from, no matter what area of the law we work
in, no matter what our politics may be..Lawyers throughout the ABA, coming from
a wide variety of backgrounds, contribute to our national, collective voice as
so many other powerful voices ridicule equal justice under law, mock due
process, and scorn our independent judiciary.
We stand united
in the understanding that our justice system does not function properly when
vulnerable people who are poor are forced to appear in court without a lawyer.
This is why the Legal Services Corporation and the legal aid agencies it
supports is so critical. The ABA was there for Congress’s creation and initial
funding of the Legal Services Corporation in the 1970s, and we will always be
there to advocate for the access to justice it provides.
Again this year, for the third straight year, the Administration has proposed closing down the Legal Services Corporation. And again, the ABA is leading the charge to advocate for the need for legal aid funding in our communities.
In addition to advocating for funding for the Legal Services Corporation, our delegations will meet with their members of Congress to promote public service loan forgiveness, because we know that a healthy republic must foster government and public service by lawyers and other professionals.
As the voice of America’s lawyers, it is also our duty to support the nation’s dedicated judges when public officials at the highest levels use their bully pulpit to crudely cast doubt on the judiciary’s professionalism. And it is essential that we stand up when strident, out-of-control politics create a crisis of public confidence in our courts and the selection process for lifetime positions on the federal bench.
At the same time, the ABA’s nonpartisan evaluations of the professional qualifications of federal judicial nominees contribute immensely to our voice and leadership for fair and impartial courts. Members of our Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary each volunteer many hundreds of hours to this valuable public service.
The ABA stands up not only to preserve America’s rule of law and the credibility of our justice system. We also stand up to maintain our credibility with other nations that routinely look to the ABA for guidance on issues of law. Our authority was recently recognized by George and Amal Clooney’s Foundation for Justice, which is partnering with the ABA, Columbia Law School and Microsoft to monitor trials around the world that pose a high risk of human rights violations, including trials that could oppress vulnerable groups, silence speech, or target political opponents.
The ABA also provides leadership opportunities for public education about the law and legal system. Our theme for Law Day this year is central to our constitutional rights, “Free Speech, Free Press, Free Society.” And we’re already planning for next year around the centennial of a landmark for American democracy, the ratification of the 19th Amendment assuring women the right to vote. Toolkits and planning guides for Law Day are on the ABA website. Please lend your leadership to these important public education efforts and help ensure that your communities are involved.
ABA members are
contributing their leadership to another important area – lawyer wellness and
well-being. We are raising awareness of the high incidence of alcohol and other
substance abuse problems among lawyers and law students, of reducing the stigma
of mental illness in our profession, and of encouraging and supporting our
colleagues as they need and seek help.
These issues have
taken an unbearable human toll. We must act.
Please spread the word about the ABA Working Group to Advance Well-Being in the Legal Profession—resources are at ambar.org/wellbeing. We need to work together and stick with this movement as long as it takes to save the lives of those we care about and make our profession stronger.
As we aspire to be the best lawyers we can be, we are practicing in an age when the profile of lawyers in America and around the world is improving. Law school applications are slowly increasing. The Meriam-Webster Word of the Year for 2018 was “justice.”
At the same
time, many Americans of all political stripes believe our national values face
historic threats. We do face challenges as a nation. At times, it seems that
compromise is beyond reach, and our great experiment in democracy could falter.
I submit to you
that the powerful institutions of our democracy—an independent judiciary, the
rule of law, free speech and a free press—have helped us weather political
scandal and extremism that tested the central philosophies and traditions of
America’s society. In the end, the rule of law has prevailed. Our system of
checks and balances held. When some checks failed to work, others ensured that
our democracy was protected.
Our institutions are strong, but they are not invincible. They require the support and protection of each and every one of us to endure. They need our leadership. They require us to instill these values in our law students, to shape them into the public citizens that our Rules of Professional Conduct call on us to be. As it is written in the Preamble to the ABA Model Rules:
As a public citizen, a lawyer should seek improvement of the law, access to the legal system, the administration of justice and the quality of service rendered by the legal profession.
As a member of a learned profession, a lawyer should cultivate knowledge of the law beyond its use for clients, employ that knowledge in reform of the law and work to strengthen legal education.
In addition, a lawyer should further the public’s understanding of and confidence in the rule of law and the justice system because legal institutions in a constitutional democracy depend on popular participation and support to maintain their authority.
A lawyer should be mindful of deficiencies in the administration of justice and of the fact that the poor, and sometimes persons who are not poor, cannot afford adequate legal assistance.
Therefore, all lawyers should devote professional time and resources and use civic influence to ensure equal access to our system of justice for all those who because of economic or social barriers cannot afford or secure adequate legal counsel.
A lawyer should aid the legal profession in pursuing these objectives and should help the bar regulate itself in the public interest.
I believe these words should be underscored among law students and lawyers at every opportunity.
We need a strong, vibrant bar to promote our professional excellence as we face a changing economy and practice landscape.
We need a strong, vibrant bar to advance America’s culture of justice and due process under the rule of law.
The world is watching us. Aspiring lawyers, law students, and young lawyers are watching us. Whatever the storms around us, we must always demonstrate civility, maintain our dignity, and encourage respect for our institutions of law and values of justice. The world is watching us, and it is our professional duty to deliver.
When forces both inside and outside this country attack the judiciary and seek to marginalize our justice system, when they ignore due process and the rule of law, the ABA will speak out.
We will do this
from a position of strength, bolstered by the support of our 400,000 members
and the 1 million lawyers our affiliated organizations represent.
We will bend
the arc of the moral universe towards justice.
We will not be
driven by fear but by hope.
We need everyone’s
talents. We need everyone’s commitment. We need everyone’s friendship. We need everyone’s
leadership. We need the example law professors set for their students, and we
need to encourage law students to get on board and see themselves as part of a
big picture of justice for all—a path that has been so rewarding to me
throughout my career.
With the
support of lawyers across America, the ABA will continue to work hard every day,
and we will be the champion of hope for due process and the rule of law.
By Buck Lewis , Chair of the ABA Pro Bono and Public Service Committee
In the 2012 HBO series the
Newsroom, we begin to get to know the main character, Will McAvoy, played
by Jeff Daniels, when we see him on a panel discussion on a college
campus. In the first episode, a young
woman from the business school asks the panel why America is the greatest
country on earth? The other panelists
say freedom, diversity and opportunity.
After a pregnant pause, Will says he doesn’t believe America is the
greatest country on earth. He embarks
upon an abusive rant which cites illiteracy, low rankings for math and science,
falling life expectancy, rising infant mortality, and incarceration per capita,
to name a few. The rant lands Will in a
good deal of trouble with the public and with his cable news network where he
anchors the evening news.
I was reminded of the episode recently when interviewing a client at a pro bono clinic. The woman was able of body and mind, had a college degree and a job but, nevertheless, was on the precipice of becoming homeless along with her children. She had a low level job for a city school system, but had recently become a teacher’s assistant and was on track to become a teacher.
When she became a teacher’s assistant, she began to be
paid once a month instead of every two weeks.
Her take-home pay was so low that after paying her rent and her
utilities, she and her children needed to live off about $10 a day plus food
stamps. The change in the cycles of her
paychecks had caused her to be six days late on her rent and her apartment
manager had immediately moved to eject her from the apartment, notwithstanding
the fact that her children’s toilet, her dishwasher and her refrigerator never
had worked. The apartment complex had
not made these repairs despite many requests.
To add insult to injury, she lost a voucher from the local housing
authority to pay for one month’s rent because when the housing authority came
to inspect the apartment on three occasions, her apartment failed each inspection
because of the problems with the toilet, the dishwasher, and the refrigerator.
Then something happened I have never experienced at one of these clinics. We were walking down the hall together and she pointed in the room two doors down from us and said, “I think that’s the lawyer who sued me to have me thrown out of my apartment.” I asked how she knew what he looked like and she explained that she had gotten behind on her rent a couple of years before and he had given her payment terms, with which she complied meticulously. We patiently waited until the apartment complex lawyer finished helping the pro bono client he was counseling. He recognized my client and agreed to sit with us and see if something could be worked out. When he learned what had happened, especially that she was about to be on the streets with her children and that the apartment complex had never fixed the toilet, the dishwasher or the refrigerator, I could see tears welling up in his eyes. Right then and there, at that clinic held in a church surrounded by a poor neighborhood on a cold Saturday morning, this chance meeting resulted in her being rescued from homelessness.
We Are All Supposed to be “Public Citizens.”
Law school leadership programs all need to teach our
students the “dos” and not just the “don’ts.”
Ask a hundred law professors or law students if much time is spent in
their legal ethics course discussing the Preamble of the Rules of Professional Conduct
and you will usually get puzzled looks. That’s
because almost 100 percent of the time spent teaching ethics is spent teaching
students what they need to know to avoid being disciplined. Very little is time spent teaching the ideals
of the profession. What does the rule of
law mean? What does it mean to have a
fair and impartial judiciary? What does
it mean for everyone to have access to justice?
These are bedrock ideals of our profession which get little or no air
time in the average law school curriculum.
The Preamble to the Rules of Professional Conduct makes it
absolutely clear that all lawyers are to give of their time, resources,
and civic influence to ensure that we all have equal access to justice. The Preamble discusses the fact that lawyers
should be “public citizens.” Most law
students and most lawyers cannot even recall hearing that term before or after
law school. The Rules conduct provide
that, “[A] lawyer, as a member of the legal profession, is a representative of
clients, an officer of the legal system and a public citizen
having special responsibilities for the quality of justice.”
These ideals trace their history back to at least the
1890’s and arguably back to DeTocqeville.
See Reynoso: The Lawyer As A Public
Citizen, Maine Law Review, Vol. 55, No. 2 (2003). In almost every leadership curriculum, there
is some mention of the concept of being a “servant leader.” This term, of course, also embraces
unselfish, public service as an ideal of our profession. Lawyers have no monopoly over public service,
but public service should be an integral part of the life of all lawyers. Teaching these values will help many beleaguered
law students reconnect with the reasons that they went to law school to begin
with and give them a road map for feeding their souls throughout their career,
as they hop from one job to the other in varying roles as is the custom these
days.
A recent report issued by the Tennessee Supreme Court indicates that about fifty percent of my home state’s lawyers do some pro bono, twice what it was ten years ago. Of course, it is wonderful that Tennessee has come so far, but I find myself simultaneously proud and ashamed of that fifty percent number because that means that there are thousands of lawyers who do nothing. I just wish these lawyers could experience the joys of using their legal education and their experience to make a profound difference in someone’s life. I wish those lawyers could have their hearts warmed as we did that cold Saturday morning. I wish those lawyers could discuss their work with their children and bring their children to pro bono clinics, so they could experience firsthand how it feeds our souls. I often wonder where that number would be if they experienced that joy in law school.
I suspect that some members of our profession pass on pro bono because of a misguided judgment about why people have low household income. There are certainly better messengers to give you the statistics, but I can give you the result of four decades of life experiences. Some think that people are poor because they are lazy. My experience has been that this is mostly a myth. In fact, low income people often work harder than medium and high income people. Some think that people are poor because have alcohol or drug problems. That is certainly true sometimes, but usually not. Some even think that certain ethnic groups are not as smart or don’t take as much initiative as others. I have seen no evidence that this is true. In my experience, the main reasons that people have low incomes are that (1) they haven’t had an opportunity to get an education, and/or (2) some adverse life event related to their physical or mental health or family has had a profound negative impact on the course of their life.1
My mother’s family was very poor. Sometimes, they relied on my great-uncle’s
grocery store leftovers to feed the family.
I vividly remember my mother and my aunt talking about bringing their
pillows, blankets, and sheets downstairs to warm by the fire before going to
bed because the family could not afford to burn coal in the upstairs
fireplace. I never realized when I was
growing up that there was any difference between Mom’s family and Dad’s
family. They were just as much fun to be
around, just as hard working, and just as smart. With the benefit of hindsight, I still don’t
see any difference in their skills and attributes, just the circumstances into
which they were born. Sensitivity to the
role of privilege should also be a part of a complete leadership curriculum.
Another reason it’s important to teach how to be a “public citizen” and the importance of access to justice to our next generation of law students is that technology is beginning to give us the opportunity to do a better job with pro bono and access to justice that we have ever done before. This next generation of young lawyers will likely be the generation which will fully utilize these new technologies for the benefit of the public.
For example, Microsoft has just granted a million dollars to create an ideal modern online portal which each state can use for all types of access to justice resources. The first legal wellness check-ups have just been developed and are available online. See e.g. TN.FreeLegalAnswers.org. The country has its first virtual online clinic, ABA.FreeLegalAnswers.org, which allows lawyers to do pro bono work anywhere and anytime they can access the internet. Artificial intelligence is now available which will help direct clients to the best resources for them and also help pro bono lawyers give better, more thorough advice, more quickly than ever before. Efforts are under way to accumulate data collected from many sources, including but not limited to ABA.FreeLegalAnswers and Reddit, to predict which legal problems will afflict which citizens, where, and at which time of the year, month, week, or day.2 This has the potential for finally getting us into the business of preventing legal problems before they occur.3
This technology is not some quixotic wish list. It’s here today and will be available to our
newest law graduates as they progress through their professional years. But at every turn, we will have to muster the
will to devote the resources to make these things happen on a large scale. That requires that law students and lawyers
alike understand the bedrock values of our profession and are ready to lead on
the issues of the rule of law and access to justice. Any law school leadership curriculum without
significant time and resources devoted to these ideals, has a gaping hole which
must be filled.
The Work of “Greater Fools” and “Public Citizens”
Speaking of Don Quixote, Will’s hero in the Newsroom is his mentor and boss,
Charlie Skinner, played by Sam Waterston, a self-described Don Quixote who
wants to use the newscast to make television journalism what is was in the days
of Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite.
As for Will, he prefers the Camelot metaphor and is particularly fond of
the scene in which King Arthur meets a young stowaway named Tom of
Warwick. Of course, Arthurs knights Tom
and sends him back to England to pass on Camelot’s ideals to future generations.
In the closing scene of the first season of the Newsroom, Will is in his office and sees the same young student from the opening scene across the newsroom. Confronting her, he asks, “What are you of all people doing here?” Using business school terminology, she says that she has watched Will and decided that she wants to be a “Greater Fool.”4 She wants to be a “foolish” idealistic young apostle, working to accomplish the goal of effectively informing our democratic electorate. Will then says, “Ask me the damn question again!” She sheepishly complies and asks again, “What makes America the greatest country on earth?” to which Will replies, “You do.”
From coast to coast, our profession is filled with patriotic, idealistic, big-hearted “Greater Fools” and “Public Citizens.” In fact, America was built on the work of lawyer leaders who were “Greater Fools” and “Public Citizens.” We need many more of them to join us in this struggle for equal access to justice. Don Quixote and King Arthur beckon us to the challenge and purposeful leadership in our profession demands it.
Buck Lewis is the
Chair of the ABA Pro Bono and Public Service Committee and teaches Lawyers as
Leaders at the University of Tennessee College of Law. This article is based in part on an article
first published in the Tennessee Bar Journal, Volume 55, No. 1 (2019)
