Harvard Law School - Yearbook (Cambridge, MA)

Page 19 text:

The Decade Gap, if Any By John M. F erren As I write this I observe from my notes that exactly ten years ago I began the serious study of estates in land in first year Property, helped along by Professor Moynihanls trot. Because of the in- tricacy of springing and shifting uses this topic seemed to be a bit more what law school ought to be like than the preceding two weeks' worth of foxes, ducks, and doctrines about their possession. Any- way, I was an ,Eriglishjjhistory buff. andy, enjoyed puzzles fand the ltll ltliing eventually wciorinected up nicely with theyjstfldylof lapse tstatutes irifestatew planningl- WW' ilii i.i.,.t..ll.,fW I .. if ,, l cealed funtil a few divinity students started picketing Woo1worth's just before my class left Cambridgel. We became indignant over more personal incidents, such as the dayiProfessor MacLachlan slammed his casebook on the desk and yelled that no one could teach anything to students who had only lived under the New Deal! The only anxieties during our gen- erally placid three years were the Berlin crisis, which ,caused a p Jfew5litri,.,,,jurripwyprematurely into JAG, and the vnature of the classwork, demands for reform btit,by anl,laparttneri,tll,l1otslQiHf'l'Wine, and a living room Lim.ll.lfwll'j'g ll,.Milla.Wil''lln.'V 'i W. in lml., ,l'i l'ii ll'i', !' Mil ll 'N'li - WMlllwiiwWi ?'l l.l.lliiilulll.Jm'l'. 'l'lll Wf5lllll 'i ii lll'li W'llllJNlll'N'llllll'l' N' WlW il J tt' ,N lj i 'lint . ' jg' ' tu. H.. M W' ' nu. ' um.. iiii i'1 w , tp 1 'ir' 1 i ijwwjj,ji,i,j,.tj, ,iig.jj,,l.l,l,j.iiliiiijlllxlw Equally eenterta'n'ffhliiWillllllihWill'lilililillllmilffllnal'litlllllllllfllifffill.lflflfllWl'll'llliWtlllllllltlllll'lllllllllillll Law which, given itsililiilldjwlestate lllll' attllglitlftmitiineil llfiff was taught by a visiting ,, who diiifblt at length on marvelous stories Qaboutl medieval atrocities. I was not worried iaboutr the relevance of myi legal education to anything 3 ibut a lawyeris. license,, isp this wallowing in rhelbommoh law of crimes seemed unusual to me only in its possible irrelevance for the bar exam. I learned every argument for condemn- ing the rack and the screw, without being led to inquire whether present-day penology wasn't in some ways just as bad. As a standard liberal in those days my political concerns were manifested by the intercollegiate de- bate topics of the day-the union shop, nuclear testing, foreign aid-which to me had little directly to do with the Law School or a lawyer's Vocation. These issues were serious, one could even get emo- tional about them. But, generally speaking, organiza- lllllllllllllllflwdtifdjifhelltllaltdlllgtakllalizefriifithtlf, about the Law llllmlw ljxljjlnwjWh i,nWv,vjji tu vi W W r W. WWHMmij,,wi,5WM1, M,WhWNWWUWmxwiwjmjjjmwxhjmh - Sfhbol allfljlgilt?IlililflfllljtiglllljllllliflllliillllgflllflM2116S and early sixtiesrllfijfifitlfiii ifiljlpmfgmgcbliijlrnetitslil recent re- union ,, clasgedli otherj ,iiii confirm the 1- 'Nil i if l', wi iiii. ii L X ,.,, ,,ii 5 ll l lZ.'E, ..'E l ',.. 4 ','iii 'Qu ii' . ,,,,.'. Q Wi 'iMv'.jMwi:ii Plctllfelfll iiiii C Onfidence that we graduates iofg those years followed a pretty standard pattern after commencement day-the bar exam, the firm lilfrary, the 8:10 p.m. train home. Then came the step up, lunch with a client, days of gathering documents from his files, but eventually permission from ,the firm to send him letters of ad- vice. Pretty heady stuif, good professional growth, and then something happens. After a year or two the feedbackglets one know he can do the work- achievement of the Hrst, most important goal after three years QE Socratic badgering and Harvard Cold scalel C-p1usesijNow he mustlfind his satisfaction either in the n ture-of the work or at least in per- tions like SANE could not divert many of us from lpvm gwith the clients, i t the heinous crimes of another era. Law School, in heard it from Qthgfs who also every splendid detail, came first. I -work wagnft bad, There! was We were a straight-laced bunch, coat es fgtgmperamgm and a variety of t0 C1-QSS-and I0 exams- The first fW0 Y fff fhel' Wfil wii il litliiived On, putting mgsfhef 21 Curriculum, plus estate planning in the ll' l'Wf32ucl ell llitij fnisi-ifirevenr 1Qd2iyfl3i1t think were required, and why not? Weren't Hai' use sefvedfvoil and steel com- needed? We SimP1Y had faith that 'he trade associations, would turn US i11f0 1HWYe1'S by Translated that meant firms expected, Hfid Very few of ,US executive Vice President, abouttwofking for 3HY011e 9156- The iiii and build the pitch-and- vocational crisis appeared to be the selectioxijllofiijyfigwll firm by a diehard Californian married to anlleijilallyill intransigent New Yorker. i l it l We rarely were aroused from day to day by social injustices, which for the most part remained con- did not mean helping any- onei gem with an SBA loan, and it farelyllfheiintihelpifig iiii ian individual out of a real jam. I well ferneirilier a dinner party in Chicago five years ago when Qseyeral associates of large firms gig: 13

Page 18 text:

terribly important thoughts, heedless of the pixies and gremlins who observed them with less than total awe from the pillars of their own building. Austin Hall is now but a small portion of the structures that make up the physical law school. It is approached primarily from the rear or from be- neath the earth. It no longer commands its site in splendid isolation. It remains, however, the schoo1's most magnificent structure-the heart although no longer the physical center-one of-the finest buildings of one of the Iinest American architects who ever lived. I2

Page 20 text:

were virtually speechless when the secretary of one called for advice because her husband had been ar- rested for a Vietnam demonstration which tied up traffic at State and Madison. f'fWhat was the jerk doing that for? Call the desk sergeant and ask what to do. J A few things, however, began to register. Selma was especially important to me, not because I won- dered why I had not gone-that did not seriously suggest itself-but because quite obviously some people were willing to bear witness to and even give their lives for something that clearly had to be a top national priority, while I was a fungible mechanic whose direct efforts could best be justified by the need to sustain our great industrial economy. I do not at all belittle the need for lawyers to perform such functionsg oneis life is not cheapened simply by help- ing big industry and big government fight each other. But for me the thrill never came because my only re- ward, besides a bank account and friendly associates, was the awful, gloating smile of an appreciative Fat Ralph. His wishes seemed to be a terrible authority over my time as the Civil Rights Movement began to put our national and personal lives under judgment. So the unmortgaged among us, and even some of the rest, began to look for redemption and exhilara- tion in new employments, often in legal aid offices and hopefully on a leave-of-absence basis without salary cuts. After fewer than five years such hedging efforts now seem rather meager when compared with the substantial student interest today in legal aid careers and the far-reaching demands now heard from students and lawyers that law firms themselves must commit resources to lawyering in the public interest. Yet even more than lawyer delivery systems are called into question. Increasing numbers of law students are terribly concerned not merely about their vocational options as lawyers but about whether in good conscience they can take an oath of ad- mission to the bar-become an officer of the court in support of the legal system. I cannot spell out this sentiment further without either cheapening it for the students who feel it more deeply and re- sponsibly than I can express or romanticizing it for those who disparage such views. My job, rather, as the editors have charged me, is to lay bare some pres- ent-day reactions to the Law School by an alumnus whose classmates are just beginning to make partner in New York. I suppose that my principal reaction to life at the Law School these days is to note what to me has been a fast pace of change here during the past ten years-the addition of many young faculty members and of new and restructured courses and clinical 14 opportunities, the joint student-faculty quality of numerous endeavors, and the several changes in the grading system. But the pace of change, students say, is not fast enough. In this sense the Law School is a microcosm of what is going on almost everywhere in society-ferment toward a reshufliing of priorities. National or local issues, of course, are rarely easy to translate into onels personal priorities. Given my interests and abilities, a student asks, what is the business at hand for me today? How do I prepare to fit eventually into what? I offer three observations about how I see many students reacting to these questions in contrast, perhaps, to most of us who were educated in the years of Eisenhower. In the first place, unlike the students a decade ago, students today are obviously preoccupied with the need for radical changes in society. The move- ments- for civil rights, ending the war, and protecting consumers against industry-and the observable fact that an individual's efforts do make a difference in these respects-understandably dwarf the importance of spending one's time, one's vocation, on projects whose multiplier effect for the common good, if any, is hard to perceive. Little wonder that students join private law firms and industry with great reluctanceg they simply do not care to make Fat Ralph happy. This urge to join the most effective forces for change is exhilarating and makes it difficult for one to buckle down to day-to-day study of the technicalities of the law, even though effective law- yering requires considerable attention to doctrine and detail, whatever the cause. The emotional hurdle to becoming a legal craftsman was much less fre- quently before us a decade agog we were usually spared from the severity of a judgment that the times exempt no one from being careful and creative about his work product. Second, the urge today to participate in making big social changes is sometimes accompanied by an outlook which, in the extreme, can be distressing. I have heard some students and lawyers alike depre- cate the handling of divorces, consumer problems, or even evictions for the poor because each case only helps one person, or because the legal process is futile so why try. Note, for example, the following from a Tenant Union Guide prepared by The National Housing Law Project, Berkeley 09695, p. 8. . . . When a Legal Services lawyer is asked to assist an existing tenant union, how does he relate to the group? The basic principle underlying this relation- ship is that the primary goal is to sustain and strengthen the group. This principle subordi- nates test cases, legal victories, and even, on occasion, getting better housing or lower rents