Terra Extraneus

George Clooney tells Tom Wilkinson that if he wants to
keep his bar license, he better stay on his meds.

If lawyers were really as powerful and influential as depicted in the movies, then everyone would be a lawyer, or no one would be. By the end of the current release, Michael Clayton, lawyers look like Wild West gunslingers, evil cattle barons, or cowboys. In politically correct speech, the word “cowboy” has of late become a pejorative term meaning “reckless.” After viewing Michael Clayton, people may begin to think in the same terms when they hear the word “lawyer.”

Nevertheless, Michael Clayton is an enjoyable movie. I must even admit that for a moment or two, I thought I caught George Clooney acting. He was not, however, portraying a lawyer, at least not one that exists. While Michael Clayton has less in common with the real legal profession than did Judd for the Defense, it is still a movie to see.

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I was told that skateboarding was popular in our community and that it was one of the fastest growing sports in the country. I was asked to meet with a group of skateboarders and develop a program for a ministry to young people involved in this sport.

This is not the first time or the first sport that I have seen a sport become the focus of a ministry at a church in which I was a member. The last time, the ball fields and batting cages were for baseball and softball players.

But, I wonder if there will be a different reaction in the church itself. Skateboarders are by nature risk takers and not much on looking or acting conventionally, based on my observations.

In any event, should the church post rules for the activity and if so, what should be the source of the rules? Is there a national organization for the sport that provides amateur rules of conduct for the sport?

Also, baseball and softball was a sport I understood because I understood the rules and the concept of the game. But, what is the point of skateboarding? Is it as evolved as gymnastics for competitive evaluation?

It will be interesting to observe whether the community is willing to view skateboarding as a sport or as a nuisance.

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Several things have been brought to my attention this week that seem to deserve scrutiny. They are at best loosely connected, it would objectively seem, but,…well, maybe they are connected.

Money Magazine’s latest edition listed the best professions based on various criteria and lawyering was listed. That surprised me, given that it takes three years of graduate school or six years of night graduate school, and a bar examination in most states, to enter the profession. Then, it takes several years of practice to become sufficiently experienced to be of real value. Professor Irving Younger asserted it took 25 jury trials for a trial lawyer to be experienced.

But, Richard Barlow, writing in The Boston Globe, developed the theory that burnout, a persistent problem among legal practitioners, could be cured or prevented if lawyers developed a personal spiritual quest. Personally, I think he is right. But, the point not to be missed is that the need for such cure and prevention, is undeniable in the profession. He quotes a six year old study that indicated that 75% of the members of the profession were not terribly happy with their career choices or paths. Money Magazine did not seem to find the study in their research regarding “good jobs.”

In the Oklahoma Bar Journal, Allen K. Harris, a respected commentator on attorney ethics, made the bizarre claim in his recent article, “The Influence of the Socratic Method on Law Students,” that the “Socratic Method” was somehow warping attorneys into “meanness” and “blind insistence” on client’s rights with a “serious lack of a spirit of compromise.”

First, the Socratic Method is rarely used in law schools. Students usually listen to lecture after lecture in class after class, and rarely are called upon to recite or defend assertions about case book materials. Most teachers of the law are not by personality sufficiently combative to keep up such banter for more than a few minutes, much less every hour of every class or with every student. Most law school classes have so many students that even if students were subjected to the Socratic Method, they could only be participants for a few moments in a semester, if ever.

Second, Mr. Harris seems unaware of the numbers of cases that settle each year without full trial proceedings. Relatively few cases go to trial. Thus, the “spirit of compromise” seems alive and well. While some lawyers are ill mannered, combative or litigious, the vast majority counsel cost-effective dispute resolution. Thus, mediation and arbitration have come to dominate most types of civil litigation.

Nevertheless, even though the opening thrust of Mr. Harris’ article is, frankly, ludicrous, his point is probably impossible to dismiss, and that is that law schools should integrate professional responsibility and ethics education rather than teaching professional ethics merely as a collection of rules to be committed to memory. Mr. Harris wants lawyers to be moral creatures in order to be ethical lawyers. In that sense, he may be in complete agreement with Mr. Barlow. Mr. Harris, however, would have to admit that sometimes, no matter how ethical or moral the lawyers involved may be, a trial is necessary. Some clients cannot get their own stability back without a day in court and the chance to tell their side of the story. One of the reasons mediation is so effective is that it gives clients a chance to tell their story.

Texas Lawyer Magazine reported that the dean of the law school I attended resigned because the law school fell in the US News and World Reports 2007 rankings of accredited law schools to 70th place out of 180 accredited law school that achieve mention on the ranking list. While I do not doubt the quality of the list, I simply doubt its enduring significance and was stunned it would be career determinative for a law school dean. The dean, she was not the dean while I was a student in the 1970s, ended a six year tenure rather than supervising implementation of a plan to improve the school’s rankings. After all, there is always next year’s list, to loosely quote most sports fans.

So, what did we learn from these seemingly disparate reports? The profession is still thought of as desirable as a vocation, so much so that a law school dean might lose popular support for failing to maintain the ranking of a law school and reducing, allegedly, the marketability of the graduates. But, the focus on marketability, graduating, employment, and making a living, seems to have crowded out spiritual values, and maybe moral values, leaving only ethical constraints.

Mr. Harris’ proposal to integrate teaching about professionalism, rather than teach it just as a separate class, will fail, if Mr. Barlow is correct, because morality and spirituality are being de-emphasized, and may be defeated in the lives of practitioners by over emphasis on the technical or economic aspects of practice. Mr. Harris must recognize that a mere fall in annual rankings in a media list can bring about a change in law school administrations. Discussion of the alteration of the entire curriculum to integrate professionalism, or even morality, will not be possible in such an environment. Worse, Mr. Harris must evaluate Mr. Barlow’s position and decide if integrated professionalism and ethics curriculum, without morality, or even spirituality, yes, even faith, will make any difference at all.

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