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 partnered with Generation Generosity, Akina, and a roomful of estimable esquires to re-imagine the legal profession. In advance of the Lab, Content Director Andrew Benedict-Nelson asked each participant – whether trained in the law or not – to identify a person that he or she considered to be the paragon of all that is good about lawyers and lawyering. Here’s what Tammy Cowser of Marshall Gerstein had to say. Click here to see the other interviews.

Andrew Benedict-Nelson: I’d like you to tell me about a lawyer who, for you, embodies what’s best about the legal profession. It can be someone from the past or the present, someone you know or someone you don’t, any type of law or lawyer.

Tammy Cowser: I am thinking of a managing partner at a mid-sized law firm focused on corporate law. He had worked his way up through the ranks and had a maturity about him, but he also had the youthful energy that a new associate has. I think it’s a nice mix of maturity and youthfulness that gives you the ability to apply years of experience and still be open to new ideas.

Also, the ability to work with clients to become their business partner, not just their lawyer – almost more of an advisory role, almost like they are a part of their organization. And the ability to maneuver through politics, not just of a governmental structure, but of any organization you might be interfacing with. It’s having that savvy and poise and ability to move between different environments – then pulling them together to make a connection.

ABN: Okay, now I’d like you to think of something else: the ecosystem of the legal profession today, everything from students coming into law school to the ways they develop as lawyers to the definitions of success that are current among lawyers. Do you think there is a place in that system for they type of person you are talking about? Is this a system where this type of person prospers?

TC: I think the system does produce this type of person. I don’t necessarily think that it’s entirely the system at work that does it. I think there are outside influencers like family and culture. It could be that people have prior education before entering the legal arena – maybe they went to business school first. I think your point of entry into the legal system influences the way that you travel through it.

ABN: Do you think there are changes that could be made at any point in that system that would make us more likely to see this type of person who you admire?

TC: I think there could be more emphasis on individuals who are looking to enter a mid-size law firm or large law firm to think of what they are doing as their own business. I think it’s instilling the entrepreneur idea in someone going into law school from an early point. That means looking at things from a marketing perspective, that there are ways to sell yourself that are creative.

Also, customer service – many attorneys are very good at the nuts and bolts of what they do. They master procedure, they master theory, they master research. But many times they don’t know how to communicate. So communications skills, external to a firm and internal to a firm. Many times people are so pushed to succeed in terms of dollars and cents that they get away from building a business that will be solid ten, twenty, thirty years down the road.

ABN: So those are some deficits of our existing system. What do you think are our assets? Where does the system work well in order to produce the type of person you describe?

TC: I see it in the ways firms acclimate new associates, like mentoring programs. Going through a professional development program can provide great opportunities for new associates to explore their own ideas, and not get so locked into a particular framework.

I think you also have new associates coming on board who are thinking in ways so different from more senior partners that they are poised to do a lot of technical work that a lot of attorneys in the past weren’t able to do. They are able to capitalized on new social media platforms and work in the electronic environment that clients are demanding. They’re quick. And their training in law school has helped the refine that. I think there is a lot of potential there. But how do we work in multi-generational law firms so that can be capitalized upon?