Lawyers Should Be Patrons of Culture

Editor’s Note: The following remarks were delivered by John B. Pew of Kansas City 50 years ago during a luncheon following the enrollment ceremonies for new Missouri Bar admittees on May 2, 1959. The “young fellow by the name of Whittaker” to whom Mr. Pew refers is Charles Evans Whittaker of Kansas City (1901-1973), who served as an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1957 to 1962, and whose name graces the Western District of Missouri federal courthouse in that city.

This address will not be a law lecture. It is fair to assume that each new member of the Bar present is already a dedicated person. The fact that you stand admitted to practice means that you have successfully passed, year-by-year, about 19 consecutive school years. You must have been faithful and a student beyond the average because your work in school has grown progressively more difficult after leaving high school, and in order to obtain a license to practice law in Missouri you did 7 years of hard school work beyond high school. You have foregone the possible earning of wages during that time and some one has spent about $10,000 in money on you in those years of study, and in addition to this you have passed very rigid character tests. So you stand here today as young people dedicated to a great purpose in life.

I want bluntly and abruptly at the outset to tell you what it took me 40 years to realize, and that [is] that the life of a practicing lawyer is perhaps the most interesting, fascinating and glorious career to which a man can dedicate his life. It is also one of the most exacting.

You ought to know this at the outset so that each one of you will go forth with the pride and dignity you would maintain if each were the heir apparent to some throne.

This reference to the importance of our profession is not merely the extravagant statement of your speaker. It is in all respects sustained by the facts. Since the memory of man the lawyer in every age and in every clime has been the outstanding character in history.

In nearly every community there is a lawyer as a great moral force and an inspiration to the youth. The lawyer has framed every constitution under which governments are established and has prepared every code of law by which we live. It is the lawyer, in one capacity or another, who has guaranteed security of life, property and liberty. The rulers of all nations have chartered their course according to the decisions of lawyers. In nearly every walk of life the lawyer has been predominant and has shaped the destiny of nations.

On a national level in our own country we have 3 distinct departments of government. The executive, the legislative and the judiciary. Most of the presidents of the United States have been lawyers. A large percentage of both houses of our national Congress are lawyers and certainly they are more influential in that branch than any other group and in the third department, the judiciary, all are lawyers.

On the state level many of our governors are lawyers and again many members of our legislatures are lawyers and the members of our courts are all lawyers. On the county level, the mayors, city attorneys, prosecuting attorneys, probate judges, magistrates are all lawyers. It will be difficult to find a public school or a college or university anywhere in America that does not have a lawyer on its board to whom the other members look for advice. It would be difficult to go into any church of consequence without finding 2 or 3 lawyers in leading positions.

The banks are kept solvent and out of trouble by the advice of lawyers. The colossal financial institutions of this country all depend upon a battery of lawyers to advise them and to make possible their compliance with the law.

Large corporations are constantly moving lawyers into executive positions.

This is a partial recital of facts showing that in almost every activity in our country lawyers take a leading part. We are not boasting about the importance of lawyers.

This recital is for the sole purpose of causing you to realize your responsibility to the community where you may live. It is not done for the purpose of inflating your concept of your importance, but for the very opposite purpose of making you humble.

One of the first essentials of real greatness is humility and while I deem it my duty to create in you all the pride that you can possibly have in your profession, yet I know that if the pride is genuine and real, you will accept it in humility, and only hope that you can live up to what your community may rightfully expect of you.

We should recognize that this prominence of lawyers in nearly every walk of life creates a prejudice against us in the minds of some people. Thus, the importance of accepting our responsibility with humility.

All in all we have done a good job in holding the respect of most of the people. This is due largely to the high regard we have for our courts. This means that we honor not only the courts, but the personnel of the courts. When a judge comes into a lawyers’ meeting, great deference is shown him and as a matter of course he sits at the head table. This must ever remain so. We lawyers must, with confidence, be able to say to anyone suffering from a wrong that we can get justice for him in our courts.

The man who is now judge was a practicing lawyer at our Bar. We had legal battles against him. He may have won. Then on the Bench, he decides a case against us, yet, with all, we respect and honor him because he did what he felt was right, but this shows how the very life of a lawyer makes of him an open-minded and fair-minded citizen. Let us adhere scrupulously to our tradition of honoring our courts.

Another thing contributing to the respect for lawyers is – we live by a code of ethics. A code of ethics is a refinement of conduct going beyond the requirements of law. There are certain things that we might do that are legal, yet are prohibited by our code of ethics. You will have clients insisting that you do something that you ought not to do. You might do what your client requests without violating the law, but it would be unethical.

We lawyers by adopting and adhering to a code have provided for ourselves a standard of upright living that is higher than is required by law. It would be a tremendous blessing to our country if other groups had strict codes of ethics for their conduct. For instance, it may be legal for a newly elected Congressman to put his boy on the payroll at $10,000 a year while he goes to law school, but it would be better for the country if such acts were regarded as unethical. Many similar examples might be given. Each young lawyer should provide himself with a copy of the Code of Ethics of the American Bar Association.

I trust that many of you will practice in what we call the country. That is, in the various counties of the state, and not all seek to locate in the cities. Practically every county in the state is in need of leadership afforded by a young lawyer who is thoroughly saturated with a determination to make his life count as an outstanding lawyer wherever he may practice.

For several years I have had some views about the opportunities for a fuller life in the country. A few years ago we had a Seminar in the Law Department of the University of Kansas City. The students and many graduates and young lawyers were present and they had a discussion on “How to Obtain and Keep Clients and Where Should One Practice.”

I was chosen to lead one end of that discussion and a young fellow by the name of Whittaker was the other lawyer to lead in the discussion. I was introduced first and I frankly said that as to the question of how to get clients, and how to hold them, that I had no rules and didn’t claim to know much about it, and would not discuss that question, but as to the place to practice, that depended on what kind of citizen you ultimately wanted to be and I pictured the opportunity of a young man who went to a small town, rented an office on the second floor over the First National Bank, across the street from the Courthouse, and the bank would at once throw him enough business to pay his rent and he would soon be city attorney and then prosecuting attorney and then go to the state senate and maybe on into Congress and maybe to the United States Senate and might be nominated for Vice President.

Or he might go the other way and soon be a magistrate, probate judge, circuit judge and then move up to the Supreme Court. In the meantime, he would be a member of the school board and his advice would be sought from everybody. He would in all probability marry the banker’s daughter and live in the second best house in the town (the banker retaining the best one for himself) and he would know the location of every fishing hole in the state, and have his hunting guns all polished and on the rack ready for the open season. And in the fall of the year he could see a good football game every Saturday and after this brief picture I said “if anybody wants a better lay-out than that, he is hard to please.” And then I discussed it seriously for a few moments and then said: “These opportunities are open to a young lawyer in the country.”

Young Whittaker was then called on to reply and he was quite disgusted with me and said if you are going to be a lawyer at all, you have got to locate where the law business is, and it is all centralizing in the city.

Soon after that he was president of the Missouri Bar Association and then suddenly appointed to the Federal Bench in Kansas City, and Providence seems to have provided a vacancy on the Circuit Court of Appeals and he was moved up to that and then to the Supreme Court of the United States.

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Our office represents many liability carriers and we take a good many depositions. Last summer it became necessary for me to go out to the house of a lady who didn’t care to come down the office and give her deposition and the public stenographer drove me out and he said to me: “How did you lawyers make a living before the days of the automobile?” Well, with some meekness, I admitted that we just about didn’t.

The automobile is making a living for a lot of lawyers. For awhile, a number of years ago, we felt that there wasn’t much business in the counties out in the state but there isn’t a county in Missouri now that doesn’t have enough automobiles to support 3 lawyers. They have accidents in the country the same as they do in the city and the insurance companies operate out there the same as they do in town. So there is plenty of business for the country lawyer.

It has been common knowledge in the state for the last 50 years that great all-around lawyers, who subsequently become great judges, often come from the country.

A lawyer in the country must himself deal with every kind of a legal question and in most instances through his own efforts he must study his question and decide what the legal remedy should be. In a city many lawyers, if they get going at all, become specialists and soon are afraid of every legal question except the one in which they are a specialist. So that if you have a desire to be really great lawyer, practicing in the country may give you the better opportunity.

You will permit me to suggest a few DO’s and DON’TS. Since my Seminar discussion with Brother Whittaker, I have thought a little about the question of how to get clients and hold them. I am now certain of my answer to that question.

The lawyer who renders the most efficient service will have the clients. Service rendered is the answer to that question and over and over again you have been told that nothing takes the place of preparation.

Beware of the subtle influence of the old thief – Procrastination. Perhaps in no profession is there a greater temptation to procrastinate than in the practice of law, and it is the one big criticism lodged against a lawyer. It is so pleasant for people to drop in and visit with a lawyer. He is an interesting person, has a nice office and his friends will choose that as a place to loaf. Don’t deceive yourself, that if you put in your time talking to people during the day, that you are practicing law. Any yielding to that temptation will soon create a bad habit. That of procrastinating.

This habit of procrastinating is followed by another bad habit and that is of carrying your brief case home every night. That is the fixed and constant habit of the 3rd and 4th rate lawyer who procrastinates all day, carries his brief case home at night and again procrastinates and brings his brief case back next morning unopened.

It is an unfavorable badge to wear, always carrying a brief case. It is not a sign of industry.

Your most satisfactory day is the one when you feel certain of some definite accomplishment that day. As far as business is concerned, it is difficult to find a lawyer’s desk that doesn’t have on it unfinished work. Just finish the work on your desk and before you get through more work will come in.

Another DON’T, according to my book, don’t become a reformer. For our form of government, it is necessary to have two political parties. A lawyer ought to be identified definitely with one party or the other. No group of people has a corner on honesty and I deal cautiously with any person who is known as a reformer. It is a cheap way to notoriety. I don’t think much of a man who acquires sudden notoriety by proclaiming from the house tops that he is more honest than his neighbor. Certain it is many conditions need to be corrected and we are entitled to more efficient service from some public servants but be constructive in your efforts and not destructive.

Another important matter. Identify yourself actively with Bar Associations, local, state and American. Your reputation as a lawyer depends largely on what other lawyers say about you. Get acquainted with other lawyers.

What I have said to you is commonplace. In fact, it is very earthy. I know I have before me young people who will soon appear in the various stages of the picture I have painted. You are going to be prosecutors, state senators, members of the school board, magistrates, circuit judges, appellate judges, members of Congress, perhaps a Senator, and maybe a Vice President, but I feel quite incapable of presenting to you my notion of an attractive life far and away beyond marked success as a lawyer.

The practice of law on a high plane develops those noble qualities which are inherent in each of us.

I can illustrate what I have in mind. For many years, we in Kansas City had memorial services each year for those of our members who had passed on and in nearly every instance some friend of the deceased was asked to speak in his memory and never in those memorial services was any mention made of the volume of his business, how many clients he had, what great fees he collected, but those speakers, usually with great eloquence, would point out the activities of the man’s life, how fair and clean he lived and what a tremendous contribution his life had been to the community.

You cannot measure up to your opportunities and responsibilities as a lawyer without having unconsciously built a monument for yourself.

It is difficult for me to definitely express what I have in mind. The possibilities of a young life today are so great that if you get the proper concept of the sort of being you are, you will realize that there is no limit to the good you may do and usefulness of your career will be such an inspiration to you that you will seldom know fatigue. Energy will always be supplied by the inspiration that you get from the consciousness of the usefulness of your life.

We are in a state of chaos in the entire world. Following world wars, which began more than 40 years ago, we find all the peoples of the earth now realizing that they too may have a national life and national freedom. We are processing the entire world. … Without our choosing, the leadership of the world has suddenly fallen on the United States. The rapidity with which we have risen to this leadership has no parallel in the world’s history.

We, as a people, are genuinely sincere in our desire for world peace. To help bring this about, we have sent millions of dollars to small nations less fortunate than we and have brought to the backward peoples of the world practical training in how to realize the standard of living we have. Our efforts have been generous and unselfish, yet we are misunderstood.

It is apparent that our growth has been so rapid that there is a certain immaturity in our people as a nation.

The immaturity of our education process and lack of appreciation of the cultures that other nations have developed have made our approach to world problems ineffective.

The lack of knowledge of world culture has brought about a certain crudeness in our approach to other peoples. In fact, many of the people we send on these missions are individuals who are looking for jobs and are slightly unfortunate as representatives of our country, and are failing to create a favorable impression.

Our industrial and material growth has so vastly outrun our spiritual growth that we are out of balance. By reason of our material success, our high standard of living, our indulgence in luxuries, we have developed a national smugness. Thus, we suffered the shock of the century when it was announced that Russia had successfully launched the Sputnik.

Our nation was seized with hysteria in realizing that Russia had made scientific progress far beyond what we had achieved. Our newspapers were flooded with editorials. The many foundations now existing in this country made liberal grants to many of our leading universities for purposes of research as to the apparent defects in our educational processes. The presidents and faculties of our universities and colleges expressed great alarm about what appeared to be the shallowness of our education.

Many had already realized that we had almost abandoned the cultural purpose of the liberal arts college. The great thinkers of the world are now of the opinion that education and worldwide peace are one indivisible problem and perhaps the survival of mankind may depend upon what we do educationally. Ignorance is a burden which society can no longer afford.

H.G. Wells has observed “human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.” Man’s future hinges on his ability to master his own mind. The vigor of a nation and its educational level go hand in hand.

We have had the idea that our national position depended upon our financial strength but in reality it depends upon the educational level of our people. Going to college is no longer a frolic. The proper concept of education must begin in the home and unless a family is improving its educational and cultural standards, it is being graded downward.

President Eisenhower often refers in his speeches to the one great asset of America – the spiritual strength of our people. This does not differ greatly from those who believe in improving our cultural appreciation.

Franklin D. Murphy, the able Chancellor of the University of Kansas, has adopted as his motto “We strive to educate the whole man.”

The outstanding institution in Kansas City is the Nelson Gallery of Art. There is no better proof of the wisdom of William R. Nelson, the founder and owner of The Kansas City Star, than that he gave his great fortune to build and endow our Art Gallery in order to emphasize the need of culture in our national life. Our building, housing this gallery, is one of the challenging buildings of America.

Here are some of the inscriptions carved in stone near the cornices in various places on that building:

Art deals with things forever incapable of definition and that belong to love, beauty, joy and worship.

True painting is only the image of the perfection of God. Through art we realize our perfection.

The soul has greater need of the ideal than of the real.

It is by the real that we exist. It is by the ideal that we live.

All things pass. High art alone is eternal.

The first time you are in Kansas City you should visit our Nelson Art Gallery and read and ponder those inscriptions on the building.

As soon as we become conscious of the apparent defects in our educational processes, there was great pressure to appropriate more money for higher education. This will not solve the problem. We have excellent physical equipment in our colleges and universities and our faculties and administrative officers are vastly better than we give them credit for being.

The cause for turning our poorly educated graduates is due to the student body itself. Our educational institutions must be furnished better raw material out of which they are to turn our educated graduates.

The cure for our problem lies largely in the homes. The homes must deliver to the college, freshmen who have some sense of refinement and with some cultural background.

I feel that I can today contribute my mite to the national problem by suggesting something that will help. Definitely I believe that our schools and colleges have a right to look to the home of lawyers for better material for college students.

And therefore the final suggestion I make to you today is that LAWYERS SHOULD BE PATRONS OF CULTURE.

When we think of culture we think of art galleries, philharmonic orchestras, conservatories of music, museums and other like institutions. All of these institutions must be sponsored. It is not enough to approve of them. Some one must sponsor them, encourage them, aid them and cause the community to properly appreciate them. There is no class of educated men in a better position to do this than lawyers.

Doctors are highly educated but they are in the hospital or at the sick bed 7 days in the week with unlimited hours. The ministers of our country approve culture but few of them are patrons. The very limited number of them in Kansas City, who are actually patrons of culture, are regarded as leading ministers of the city. Engineers are technically highly educated, but they are building a bridge here today and tomorrow a great government project somewhere else.

No educated man is in as good a position to become the outstanding patron of culture as is the lawyer. You should contemplate the tremendous return you will get for doing this. How your wife will love you if you take her to a few philharmonic concerts, to an opera, spend the day in a great art gallery and see the museum, and insist on making some contribution to these worthy causes. Above this, your children will respect you. What a pride it will be for each to say, my father was a man of culture. There is little excuse for a college student coming out of the home of a lawyer who does not have a cultural background.

By culture I mean that you have a home of refinement and any person who enters therein will say that genteel people live here. With little money you can create the atmosphere of refinement in your home.

I spoke once to the Chamber of Commerce on the money value of culture. Nearly all of our derelict citizens, who become charges upon society, the teenage offenders, nearly all come from broken homes or from homes where there is a total lack of refinement and culture. The divorce rate would be reduced 75% if we had homes of culture and refinement. A home of luxury and one of culture and refinement are not necessarily one and the same thing. The type of thinking that causes you to love culture is exactly the opposite type of thinking that takes young people into crime and into the gutter.

The tremendous financial burden that is thrown upon the city and our state and Federal governments in looking after the criminals and the derelicts could largely be saved if those unfortunate people had been raised in an environment of refinement.

Our educational system has not impressed the balance of the world. Many who have been able to send their children through college and then give them a trip to Europe often find that these children don’t want to come home. They fall in love with the older culture of those older countries.

The law profession now stands high. If you are known as a man of refinement and culture in your community, you should have no worry about having plenty of clients and law business. Of course we know that poets and artists can’t be lawyers. Lawyers aptly are referred to as the thinkers, but to improve our standing in the world we must develop the spiritual power of our people which is my conception of culture.

I need only to mention that culture after all is the expression of man’s spiritual development and is an essential part of any genuine education.

Culture must be supported and sponsored as an antidote to influences ever present that might soon make of us a nation of morons.

The filthy literature that we are constantly fighting to keep off the market. The broken homes and thousands of children left by divorced parents and many TV programs (which children watch by the hour instead of doing their homework) and then for the teenagers the automobile and the vicious citizen who will sell them liquor – all these are distractions not known by us 50 years ago.

Children yielding to these temptations may become derelicts and charges on society. Lawyers seek to enforce the law and see that the law is obeyed. Ever since I was in college I have heard it said that the time to start the education of a child is 200 years before he is born.

We are not unmindful of the many great men who have come from humble homes. But in those humble homes there was a craving for learning and they wanted to know something about culture and refinement.

The lawyer great enough to win a $50,000.00 annual retainer from a large corporation needs other food for his soul besides success.

A dean of a noted law school said: “It’s our duty to teach law in a grand manner and to make great lawyers.”

The law is the calling of thinkers. Thinkers should have a knowledge of the world’s culture.

But the great reward to one, who loves and sponsors culture, will come in the latter days of his life, which many are inclined to dread. I feel that when I get old I will have the most delightful time of my life.

I have put aside in my own home a number of great books, which I will read when I get time, and I then will have plenty of time to browse through great libraries and occasionally take down a book and read what some great thinker has said. And I will have time to sit for an hour before a great picture in one of our art galleries and enjoy it and wonder and ponder what must have been the soul of a man who produced that canvas and then I’ll have plenty of time to enjoy great music. And we should be thankful that there is so much of it to enjoy.

How stimulating it is to sit through the concert of a philharmonic orchestra. Music is stimulating. There is power in music, but above all, one leaves a concert entirely filled with self respect. You get an uplift and that inner glow that comes from giving of our time and means to the support of culture.

When I was leaving New Haven 57 years ago this June, I was traveling with an Uncle who had come on for my graduation. We stopped in New York for 2 or 3 days and then in Washington for a couple of days. Neither of us had ever been in Washington. We were going through the almost new and very ornate Congressional library. I was tremendously impressed but as we were leaving a large room of book stacks I saw over the exit an inscription that challenged me: “What doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God?” Micah 6-8.

When Adlai Stevenson was first nominated for president in Chicago I waited far beyond midnight to hear his speech of acceptance. The nobility of his thought and the felicity of his expression were refreshing to me. His speech thrilled me and at the end of what I called a great speech he said: After all, “What doth the Lord require of us but to do justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God?” Micah 6-8. And today I can do not better than to pass this on to you – Micah 6-8.

So I say to you – go and answer the call for leadership that comes from every community in this state. Go forth and establish a home of refinement. Go forth and live, love life and live. Live enthusiastically, live abundantly but –

“So live that when they summons comes to join that innumerable caravan, which moves to that mysterious realm, where each shall take his chamber in the silent halls of death, thou go not like the quarry slave at night, scourged to his dungeon, but sustained and soothed by an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave like one who wraps the drapery of his couch about him and lies down to pleasant dreams.”