To love the law is to love the past. Even for those who were inclined to fall asleep in history class, the preparation of a thorough brief requires detailed understanding of disputes long forgotten and authorities otherwise obscure. In a courtroom, the past isn’t dead. As William Faulkner said in a different context, “it’s not even past.”

On September 16, Insight Labs will partner with Generation Generosity, Akina, and a roomful of estimable esquires to re-imagine the legal profession. As we contemplate the profession’s future, we consider it essential to recognize where we have come from – and to rescue the best representatives of that tradition from the forces that are distorting the spirit of the law today. These are our personal precedents.

In advance of the Lab, Content Director Andrew Benedict-Nelson is asking each participant – whether trained in the law or not – to identify a person that he or she considers to be the paragon of all that is good about lawyers and lawyering. Then we will discuss how that person might fit in with the profession as it exists today – or not. Further questions will illuminate all that we love and hate about the contemporary practice of law.

For now, our respondents remain anonymous – we will reveal their identities after the Lab. One of their responses follows. Click here to see the rest.

The Public Servants

ABN: I’d like you to think of a lawyer who, for you, embodies the best of what the legal profession is all about. This can be a person from the past or present, real or fictional. It can be someone you know or someone you’ve never met – any type of lawyer, any type of law.

I can think of different lawyers who I think embody different aspects of the ideal.

The lawyers I admire most are lawyers who combine both high technical competence and the ability to be involved in the important matters of their times, both large and small. For me, the people who come to mind are Warren Christopher, from O’Melveny & Myers, who died this year, or Jim Baker of Baker Botts – a distinguished lawyer and, like Christopher, a former Secretary of State.

Also John Pickering, who died several years ago, who was one of the founders of Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering. He was a very important Washington practitioner but also one of the leading pro bono advocates of his day, both in the work he did by himself and his efforts to get the organized bar involved.

These are all people who had substantial practices as well as substantial commitments to serving the common good.

ABN: So now I’d like you to think of the entire ecosystem we have for the making and maintenance of lawyers, everything from law school to the partner level. Do you think that the system as a whole encourages or discourages the quality of public service that you’re talking about?

The best answer is that it’s all over the lot. In some places it is encouraged and it is discouraged in others. My impression is that there is a large degree of talk and a fair degree of action in the large law firms to try to encourage service, but institutions vary widely in how much these are core values. I’m hard-pressed to think of any firm that does not encourage some work of that sort, but there are clearly a handful of firms for whom doing substantial pro bono work is of vital interest and built into their core structure.

ABN: Can you think of any other variables in the system that strongly affect lawyers’ public service other than the culture of firms?

The first thing that comes to mind, sadly, is a generation of law graduates with an enormous amount of debt, which limits their ability to choose purely public service. It doesn’t exclude it, but it limits it.

You know, there is a myth that there was a time in the past when the great lawyer-statesman strode across the land. But lawyers have always been involved in public service, and some have been more generous than others. Some had a less narrow view of what the commweal meant than others. I don’t know the degree to which that tradition ever existed or is fully honored now.

Look, as far as I can tell, lawyers are currently just as economically successful, if not more successful, than they have ever been. The degree to which some want to be even more successful and not use that wealth and privilege to be involved with service is an issue. But I’m not sure that that’s any different from the past. There have been times in our history when lawyers, broadly speaking, were not in the vanguard of social justice. I think there may be more of them now than there ever been.

ABN: It makes sense that’s difficult to tell. It’s easy to look to the past and find lawyers who were involved in the great events of the day – they’re the ones we remember. We don’t necessarily remember the shysters. It may be a problem of historical memory.

I think that’s right.

ABN: So regardless of whether we’re up or down on the “conscience of lawyers” scale, do you think there is an inherent connection between the legal profession and public service?

Lawyers are officers of the court. There are probably written opinions on what, if anything, that means in terms of their obligations. The organized bar certainly has recommendations, but not mandates for how much pro bono activity each lawyer should perform. We’re well below universal acceptance of that.

The boilerplate idea is that lawyers have the keys to the courthouse. They have a monopoly as a profession, so they have an obligation to help those who can’t afford  help. But that’s a somewhat crabbed view.

Being a lawyer means at least helping to regulate or participate in important economic, social, and person issues of communities, businesses, and individuals. All of that has a public component. Lawyers are also obliged to do the best they can for their individual clients, and that representation may, in some sense, not be in the broader interest. But the theory is that by keeping the system robust and having each one’s interests protected, a sort of dialectic takes over and the end result is better. That’s an idea more frequently honored in the breach than in the reality, I suspect. But yes, I think that by word and by implication, there is involvement of lawyers in public life and public matters.

Images: Warren Christopher, James A. Baker III