Read Judge Rosenthal’s 2019 Hallows Lecture at Marquette University Law School
In aspiration, it is this created self . . . that can make intelligible the path this person wants his or her life to take.
These words with which Judge Lee Rosenthal has graced our community resonate with wisdom. With depth. And, especially for those invested in becoming lawyers, with urgency.
Late in the lecture, Judge Rosenthal sprinkles some breadcrumbs as to the implications of her message for lawyers and soon-to-be lawyers. For legal educators, the path on which these breadcrumbs have been strewn ought to be explored, pursued, and extended. Promptly.
Three decades ago, once I had gotten my feet under me as a law professor, an uncomfortable feeling began to creep in. The gap between what lawyers do and what we in mainstream legal education require of law students started to trouble and even bewilder me. The gap between the (professional and personal) challenges lawyers encounter—in the workplace and away from it; in dealing with clients, colleagues, decision makers, friends, and loved ones; in carving out a career filled with meaning while grappling with the limits of time—and the tool kit that law school aims to provide lawyers struck me as, well, vast. Awareness of this gap blossomed into an obsession. Learning about the strides other professions had made in tackling the analogous challenge provided both fuel and a sense of the daunting task ahead.
Out of this emerged a new understanding of my central function as a law professor at the distinctive place that is Marquette Law School—and a new classroom experience that has enabled me to serve my Marquette law students in ways more valuable than my past efforts. To oversimplify, the upper-level elective workshop, Lawyers & Life, requires each student (1) to construct, share, and justify her individual vision of professional and personal success and (2) to craft strategies that maximize the prospects for arriving at that success.
As to (1): The course begins by inviting each student to confront—and share with the class—core questions that include:
- Who are you?
- To what do you aspire, personally and professionally? Why exactly do you aspire to these things?
- Where would you like to situate yourself on the professional landscape 5, 10, 20 years after law school? Why?
It likewise requires students to undertake a challenge from which mainstream legal education tends to keep a safe distance: to identify, explore, and justify the values that especially matter to them with respect to the careers, workplaces, and lives they will be constructing. Do you prefer teamwork, the interdependent aspects of lawyering, or the more autonomous, go-it-alone dimensions? Where do, say, money, prestige, time with family, opportunities for creativity, and community service fit in your hierarchy of values?
As to (2): Students receive twin assignments. One is to examine and reflect upon the student’s distinctive professional tool kit. Among the questions for each student to confront and probe:
- What are the strengths and weaknesses currently found there?
- How do these strengths and weaknesses mesh with your professional aspirations?
- Have you identified ways to develop and refine the particular skills/traits/sensibilities that will be indispensable to achieving your unique vision of professional success?
The other invites the student to identify two lawyers anywhere whose professional paths she, in some respect, would like to emulate. It prompts the student to reach out to these lawyers and connect repeatedly with them as the semester unfolds, so as to glean lessons from each.
The course then introduces students to five clusters of professional skills absent from the curriculum of American legal education.These skills can separate the mediocre lawyer from the good one, the good one from the outstanding one: emotional intelligence, resilience, listening, humility, and warding off or coping with burnout. Each skill features a burgeoning literature. Here the class’s experience, assisted by experts, compels students to address questions such as (1) how each one can raise emotional intelligence so as to navigate the challenges and relationships lawyers confront; (2) how to become a more effective listener and thus garner the appreciation that flows from invested listening; and (3) how humility (or the lack of it) shapes reputation and career.
Judge Rosenthal nails it: Aspiration matters, indeed providing the “something more.” For legal educators, this means guiding our students through a mix of thinking and doing, of reflection and self-assessment gained through action. It means, above all else, prompting each of tomorrow’s lawyers to grapple today with three questions: Who—as a lawyer and a person—do I aim to become? Why do I seek this? How can I begin to chart a course that will enable me to be faithful to this aim? A law school— especially one committed to caring for the individual person—should help the lawyers it molds to confront these questions.
This response and the 2019 Hallows Lecture were first featured
in the Fall 2019 issue of Lawyer Magazine
Peter K. Rofes is professor of law at Marquette University.
