Read Judge Rosenthal’s 2019 Hallows Lecture at Marquette University Law School
Judge Lee Rosenthal’s appeal to live a life in the law tempered by aspiration rather than ambition invites us, as law students, lawyers, academics, and judges, to reflect on what sustains and fulfills us for a life in the law. This response comments on the importance of having structured forums for such reflections and the role of our institutions in creating such opportunities for reflection.
Pausing to reflect on our aspirations, or, in my view, on what sustains and fulfills us, is valuable in all professions, but our profession may have a greater need than average. A number of surveys raise concerns about dissatisfaction among lawyers, and some literature documents an alarmingly disproportionate rate of depression among us. A good way to start addressing this is to pause from the pressures of deadlines, clients, billable hours, and dockets, in order to consider the more fundamental questions. Engaging in this type of reflection can be done throughout our careers to focus and to recalibrate and, when needed, to align our values with our conduct and career choices.
In recent years, the Federal Judicial Center, the educational arm of the federal judiciary, has recognized the need for judges to pause and reflect and has begun to offer mid-career seminars for federal judges. Mid-career seminars give judges the opportunity to reflect on that “something more,” as Judge Rosenthal would phrase it—the aspiration that goes beyond ambition. During a two-and-a-half-day seminar, judges in small groups discuss: What are the paradigms of judging, both historically and currently? What do we see as our role? What makes a good judge? What sustains us in our daily work and careers? The seminar thus invites an inward look, not at our ambitions, but at our aspirations as individual judges and for the judiciary.
Having completed my first eight-year appointment as a U.S. magistrate judge, I recently attended my first such mid-career seminar. I was not sure that I welcomed the implications of “mid-career,” but afterward I was grateful for the opportunity to pause and reflect, to “check” myself. While I may have been able to do this mid-career assessment on my own, it was uniquely beneficial in a structured environment with other mid-career judges and with the guidance of academics, judges, and lawyers who have thought and written about issues particularly relevant to judges in mid-career. These include the complexities of judging, emerging technologies affecting judging, and coping strategies.
Of course, reflecting on self-improvement cannot be fully accomplished by attending seminars. Each individual has the primary responsibility to do the ongoing work of probing her aspirations. But our institutions—law schools, firms, bar associations—also have a role to play, as they are the conveyors of our values as a profession. In this regard, it strikes me as important that the Federal Judicial Center, including by extension the federal judiciary, has affirmed the importance of such reflective work by putting resources into this type of seminar. But what about law students? What opportunities do they have to step away from the pressures of grades, making law review, finding internships and clerkships, job searches, and student debt, to reflect on who they aspire to be? What about the practitioner? What opportunities exist for the practicing attorney not just to acquire new skills or updates on the law, but also to reflect on whether her ambitions and aspirations are aligned? The structured opportunity to reflect on and refuel our aspirations should not be a luxury afforded only to federal judges. Our institutions should create structured opportunities for all of us to engage the question of what sustains and fulfills us in a life in the law.
This response and the 2019 Hallows Lecture were first featured
in the Fall 2019 issue of Lawyer Magazine
Diane S. Sykes, L’84, is a judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.
She served as a justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court from 1999 to 2004.
