This summer marks the beginning of my third year as your dean, and that means it is time for me to select a new theme from among the characteristics that define an outstanding lawyer. During my first year, I emphasized the commitment to continuous intellectual growth and renewal. This past year, I stressed integrity. During the 1996-97 academic year, I would like to concentrate on a theme suggested to me by Stephanie Smith ’80: the great lawyer’s inclination to teach others about the law.
Social critics sometimes portray law’s complex rituals and vocabulary as deliberately obscure, designed to maximize the value — social, economic, and political — of lawyers’ expertise. And we all have known lawyers who present themselves as the anointed guardians of a rare and inaccessible knowledge. People whose authority is to be accepted on faith, flowing appropriately from talent, training, and specialized experience. Indeed, at some time or other in our careers we have all yielded to the temptation to see ourselves that way.
Yet the very best lawyers I have known have tended to view themselves rather differently. They do not insist on trust or deference to their authority. Instead, they are teachers in the very best sense of the role.
The contexts are many in which lawyers can go beyond simple pronouncements and try to teach. A litigator can show a judge or jury not only that the law and the evidence compel a particular outcome, but also that such a state of the world is just and right. A counselor can show a client not only that the law prohibits a particular course of action, but also that there are intelligible reasons why that is so. A senior partner can teach a new colleague not only what steps are required to perform a particular service for a client, but also what more general intellectual habits and instincts give the lawyer confidence that those steps ensure quality service.
And there are more. Interactions with opposing counsel, with friends and acquaintances, with individuals and groups who are curious about the law. All give the lawyer an opportunity to teach about the domain of his or her expertise.
During the coming year I hope to have many different occasions on which to think about what it means for a lawyer to teach in these manifold settings. I would like to begin the exploration, however, by noting that “teaching” implies a certain kind of attitude towards the person one is speaking with. It implies a certain degree of intellectual solidarity. It implies a belief that one’s “student” is engaged in the same enterprise, is committed — just like the teacher — to understanding the world in a certain way. It implies a willingness to trust in the intelligence and sound motives of one’s audience, and to display that trust through one’s style of conversation.
When I reflect on my days as a student at Michigan, I well recall the brilliance of some of my favorite teachers. But just as much, I recall their attitude towards us, their students. We may have lacked knowledge, but they told us every day, through Socratic dialogue, that we had just as much capacity for insight. They demonstrated through their classroom demeanor the kind of engagement with their students that I see the finest lawyers show with judges, clients, other lawyers, and the general public. They were teaching us about our future responsibilities, as lawyers, to teach.
