Whose Job Is It Anyway?
Theresa L. F. Levings
Badger & Levings, L.C.
Kansas City
The topic:
The Making of a Lawyer: Where Does Professionalism Fit In and What Part Should Law Schools, the Bench and the Bar Play.
The participants:
Deans and assistant deans of Missouri's four law schools.
Missouri's Chief Justice, Stephen N. Limbaugh, Jr.
The Honorable E. Richard Webber of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri (also chair of the bar's Professionalism Committee)
Jefferson City lawyer Dale Doerhoff (also vice president of The Missouri Bar and chair of the bar's Law Schools Committee)
Kansas City lawyer John Black (also president of The Missouri Bar Foundation)
Keith Birkes and Chris Janku of The Missouri Bar staff
And me.
As I approached this year as president, I came up with what I thought was a simple notion: The teaching (or reinforcing) of professional values needed to be a cradle-to-grave endeavor, so to speak. The cradle in this instance was the law school, and the first year of law school was the time to start. I asked the bar's Professionalism Committee, headed by Judge Webber, to look at a program developed by the Georgia Chief Justice's Commission on Professionalism for first-year law students at that state's five law schools. This program won its first ABA award in 1994, and in 1999 Emory Law School, which expanded the program to cover all three years of school, received the ABA's Gambrell Professionalism Award.
Students in Georgia certainly found the programs valuable. "The discussion in this type of seminar is crucial. Much better than any kind of lecture on ethics and professionalism," one wrote. "Extremely effective in relating professionalism as a lawyer to ethics as a law student," wrote another. Yet another related, "From this exercise, I learned that I don't have to discard my personal ethical values in order to become a lawyer."
My thought was this: Could this Georgia model be adapted to our Missouri law schools or did our schools already have a first-year program that included the hallmarks of the Georgia plan, i.e., (1) small group discussions with first year students (2) facilitated by teams of lawyers, judges and professors, and (3) on hypotheticals focusing on professionalism issues that arise in law school and law clerking experiences? Missouri's Professionalism Committee of lawyers, judges and law school professors liked the Georgia plan and began to find out how our law schools were broaching the topic of professionalism for first-year students. The news was mostly good.
One of our schools actually was using the Georgia plan, and Judge Webber had the chance to participate at that school and observe the students' response. "These kids were on fire" with questions and deep interest, he reported. Two other schools had developed their own programs through generous support of alumni. At one point during orientation, the dean, senior associate deans and a distinguished member of The Missouri Bar provide their perspectives on the professional commitment and obligations of a lawyer. At the beginning of their second semester, students attend a one-day ethics program that includes an introductory lecture and small group discussion led by practicing judges and lawyers and members of the faculty. The school provides a capstone program in the last semester of the third year, with a lecture by a leading authority on legal ethics and once again small group discussions led by lawyers and judges. At the other school, husband-and-wife alums – one a judge, the other a lawyer – address first years at orientation with a focus on integrity as the touchstone of our profession and life balance as essential to well-being. This is followed by small group discussions led by local lawyers and judges, and then a return to the larger group for an interactive discussion led by an ethics professor on what values the small groups identified as essential to professionalism and how the lawyers present apply those values in their day-to-day practice. The fourth school followed a fairly traditional orientation approach, with a speech about the legal profession and the presence of lawyers and judges to interact with the students at a reception at the end of orientation and at other social events later in the year.
The Missouri Bar's Law Schools Committee, established at the request of the law schools because of concerns about the bar exam, has not drawn interest or activity from the law schools for at least a decade. But in response to Chief Justice Limbaugh's invitation, seven law school administrators representing the four schools attended, three of them deans. Of the seven, two were members of The Missouri Bar.
Four items were on the agenda:
I. Can existing professionalism programs for first year students be improved and can the bench and bar be part of the process?
II. What is happening and needs to happen to define for second- and third-year law students what it means to be a professional, and can the bench and bar be part of the process?
III. Is it time for a Missouri "Convocation on the Face of the Profession" focusing on the formation of professional values in law students and lawyers?
IV. What other common issues should the bench, bar and law schools pursue together?
As it turned out, we never got around to these questions. But the law school representatives raised a variety of related and unrelated concerns: the bar passage rate; the makeup of the Board of Bar Examiners; the need for ongoing discussion among the parties assembled; the schools' concern about interference with their curricula; whether law school deans should sit ex officio on the bar's Board of Governors; and the student debt load upon graduation. They also expressed some skepticism about the need to spend more time on professionalism in the law schools. They stated their concern that it was the profession, not the law schools, that was failing its young and older lawyers when it came to instilling professional values. They also questioned Missouri lawyers' interest in and commitment to preserving our profession's core values. One dean noted that the legal profession "has spent a decade floundering with professionalism initiatives."
At least a couple of those issues could not be ignored. These deans had hit upon something I have been saying around the state since I began my travels last fall.
Between September 14 and November 8 in Cape Girardeau, Clayton, Kansas City, Columbia and Kirksville, I have given more or less the same speech to the 400 or so lawyers and judges assembled. I repeat parts of it here that relate to the deans' observations:
My goal this year is to focus my energies and the bar's services on ways to make the practice of law more rewarding on a day to day basis. One approach is to improve our daily working environment – specifically the way lawyers and judges treat one another and the way in which we, individually as lawyers and collectively as a profession, are regarded by our community. For far too long, the many have stood silent and let the few increasingly define our profession.
The few are those lawyers who think that their admission to the bar gave them a license to bully, that being a lawyer is about mastering the art of personal attack on other lawyers, parties, witnesses, judges, anyone who stands between them and the result they seek. The few are stealing the joy of the practice from the rest of us.
I am asking the law schools and the judiciary for help, but I cannot convincingly ask for the help of the law schools and judges without acknowledging the practicing lawyers' responsibility for this problem and for its solution. We have identified the problem; we have bemoaned the problem. We must now step up and address the problem before our profession and our system is irreparably harmed. I need you, each of you, to stand up and be counted, to choose to act honorably, to demand the same of others, to tell our judges that we support their efforts to assure that litigants, lawyers and witnesses behave with dignity and do not dishonor our system. You have the opportunity every day to be a leader, to set the standard, to teach other lawyers, young and old, within your orbit, what it means to be a member of the legal profession. You also have the opportunity to add your voice to this discussion – to help me, the Board of Governors and other bar leaders find creative, positive ways to reclaim our profession and restore it to its glory.
I want you to talk about it, think about it, call me, write Judge Limbaugh, write your bar leaders, write your judges, talk to one another. I want you to examine your own conduct, mentor and counsel others, and ask the courts to help.
This is primarily a lawyer's problem and it is primarily our job to fix it. Are you content to let ours be the last great generation who enjoyed the practice, who put their profession ahead of business, who thought their first obligation was to help others, not merely to help themselves? It is a question of leaving our world and our profession better than we found it. If lawyers won't do it, who will?
Today I add to this list a request that you talk to your law school deans and professors about the law schools' role in helping teach professionalism. And when you do, be prepared to talk about what you and other practicing lawyers are doing to solve the problem. The law schools are right to ask this question.
Some of the bar's efforts to focus on professionalism are summarized at the end of this column. One of our deans, Burnele Powell of the University of Missouri – Kansas City, has offered some ideas for worthwhile endeavors on behalf of professionalism. His list also follows this article.
As always, I am interested in what you think about what I am saying here, about the bar's efforts and about the dean's suggestions. What are you willing to do to help?
The Missouri Bar's Recent Professionalism Programs and Activities
The following list summarizes current and ongoing efforts by The Missouri Bar to foster professionalism among our members:
1. The Missouri Bar initiated a requirement for all new members to attend, within 12 months of admission, a program on ethics, professionalism and risk management. The Missouri Bar offers to present to each law school in Missouri a free program for third-year law students that fulfills this requirement. Otherwise, The Missouri Bar and other CLE providers provide ethics/professionalism/risk management programs periodically throughout the year for new members.
2. As part of each Missouri lawyer's minimum continuing legal education responsibility, three hours of ethics/professionalism education must be satisfied every three years.
3. At each Missouri Bar-sponsored continuing legal education program, lecturers are encouraged to include all appropriate references to ethics and professionalism possible.
4. The Missouri Bar has adopted Principles of Civility and endorsed Tenets of Professional Courtesy that are broadly distributed among our members and adherence is encouraged in all ways possible.
5. Articles are frequently written in bar publications encouraging professionalism.
6. The Missouri Bar annually acknowledges professionalism through various awards that are given at The Missouri Bar's annual meeting and at other times during the year.
7. The Missouri Bar's standing Professionalism Committee meets regularly throughout the year to consider and recommend any and all programs and activities that might further enhance professionalism among our members.
Projects to Enhance Professionalism
Submitted by Dean Burnele Powell University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law
1. Sponsor, statewide, open houses at every law firm and invite law students to bring their families and friends to visit and discuss the state of practice and the legal profession.
2. Sponsor a profession-wide reading and discussion, when during a single 12-hour period lawyers, students and others discuss a work.
3. Sponsor professionalism dinners across the state, at which participating law students, faculty, lawyers and judges would be invited to have dinner and discuss hypothetical questions.
4. Establish Professionalism Institutes, consisting of the state's law school deans and attorneys from districts covering the state (e.g., two from Kansas City and St. Louis, and one each from Springfield and Jefferson City) to meet formally twice each year and publish a quarterly letter of opinions and commentary.
5. Ask the highest courts of participating jurisdictions to require the appointment of ethics peers at each law firm consisting of at least 10 attorneys. In addition to serving as the source of information about ethics and professionalism in their firms, such peers would have responsibility for in-reach and out-reach to lawyers and law students, and for the quarterly convening of participating lawyers, judges and students.
6. Provide that students may complete their first-year lawyer ethics and professionalism requirements through participation in advanced professionalism education during the second and third years of law school.
7. Establish a state bar ethics and professionalism seal, which could be earned by every firm with an ethics and professionalism program that meets stated criteria.
8. Establish an ethics and professionalism website.
9. Establish ethics and professionalism research grants for faculty and students.
10. Organize a state bar film festival (alternating annually between Kansas City and St. Louis) focused on films that promote such themes as honesty, justice, honor, respect, loyalty and courtesy.
11. Organize a read-in on May 1 of each year, during which judges, lawyers, law students and others read excerpts from seminal legal documents, opinions, essays, etc.
12. Conduct (or reenact) a lawyer disciplinary hearing at each of the jurisdiction's law schools.
13. Hold an annual dinner, hosted simultaneously in the major venues across the state, to honor the state's law student leadership.
14. Require that annually, upon naming of every new partner in a law firm, new partners join the judges of the highest court for a dinner and discussion about the state of ethics and professionalism within the bar.
15. Require that every law firm write and maintain at the highest court (or its web site) a firm standards and practices statement.
16. Establish a simulated learning competition, along the lines of moot court, negotiations and counseling, and debate programs, focused on ethics and professionalism.
17. Establish an annual Bar President's Ethics and Professionalism Award, to be awarded at the primary meeting of the state bar.
18. Establish ethics and professionalism chairs at each of the public law schools.
19. Establish an oral history project that could involve students and practicing lawyers (perhaps the young lawyers' division of the state or local bars) in interviewing lawyers about their lives in the law.
20. Provide for the matching (and correspondence between) lawyers and law students in the jurisdiction as pen pals (more appropriately, e-mail pals) for at least a semester, as a means of qualifying for continuing education credits.
JOURNAL OF THE MISSOURI BAR
Volume 58 - No. 1 - January-February 2002