Transcriber: Ohlala_ J'adore Reviewer: David DeRuwe
I once had a law professor that offered to make the joke
that the entire reason why you go to law school
is just so you can learn a handful of fancy Latin phrases
to impress people at dinner parties.
(Laughter)
It's not the fanciest or most Latin of words I know,
but today I want to talk to you and try really hard to impress you,
talking about zeal.
"Zeal" is hands-down one of my favorite words,
one of the most important words for me.
Zeal: great energy or enthusiasm in pursuit of a cause or an objective.
It's not the only way to get at this point;
it's probably more common to talk about having passion, enthusiasm.
There are other fun ways to talk about having gusto,
but I'm talking very particularly about zeal.
And zeal is the very particular word that I'm choosing today,
and it's so important to me because I'm a lawyer.
So going back to that dinner party example -
Whether you're making small talk with a stranger at a bar,
whether you're at a dinner party,
it's pretty common to ask people "What do you do?"
and talk about your profession.
And when people find out that I'm a lawyer,
it's pretty common that people want to ask me about their legal problems -
something they've had before,
something they think is around the corner,
or better yet,
their cousin's aunt's sister halfway across the country
is in this mess.
What can they do?
And odds are, you know, for lawyers that face this type of situation,
it might be that they ask you a very specific question
about the type of work you do,
and maybe you can help them a little,
maybe you can point them in the right direction.
But if you think about it, odds are,
whatever a lawyer gets asked in this type of situation,
the most likely correct answer is "I don't know."
People hate to say "I don't know."
Grinnellians hate to say "I don't know."
But if you think about it, that's probably true.
Okay, so we have 50 states.
Every state has a bunch of different cities and localities with their own laws.
The 50 different states with laws,
a complex federal system on top of it of laws,
and these laws are changing all the time.
If you become a lawyer, you probably become specialized.
You don't really go to law school to learn everything in every situation
and not just to impress that person at the bar.
So what you do instead is you learn in law school
how to think like a lawyer.
That way you can kind of be a professional chameleon.
Whatever situation you end up in,
wherever you practice,
whatever you decide to do,
however things evolve,
you can do what you need to do to get up-to-date, to be adept,
to be a professional.
Now, whether you're a current student here,
considering law school,
or whether law school was never in your cards
and you just might want to brush up on your logic skills for some reason,
self-improvement,
or I once had an ex-girlfriend tell me that it wasn't fair dating a lawyer,
because I won every argument.
So you know.
But for whatever reason,
if you want to learn what it means to think like a lawyer,
you don't have to go to law school.
There's plenty of books and websites and videos out there on this topic.
And if you dive into it,
probably the most common things you're going to see
are sort of on this list.
So like the first thing,
especially if you're gearing specifically for things for law students,
you'll be taught IRAC: - Issue, Rule, Analysis, Conclusion.
So in law school, most exams are what we call "issue spotters,"
like a big, long fact pattern where you're supposed to read it,
and the idea is that you do this -
you spot the issue,
you discuss what the rule is that applies to the issue,
you show your work, your analysis, your application,
and you explain the conclusion, the result that should come from it.
And all the while, while you're doing this,
you're also taught these other techniques.
You're taught to avoid emotional reactions and distractions.
Don't let a red herring take you off-topic
but focus on the logic, the core of the issue.
You learn how to argue and see both sides.
Maybe you're assigned a side you don't personally agree with,
or maybe you need to see the other side to anticipate and get out in front of it
or respond to it.
You learn how to infer rules from patterns.
You see what's happened time and time again
to anticipate what happened next,
what will happen next.
You compare situations using analogies.
If you come before a court, you might want to say,
"Hey, this is just like this thing that's happened ten times before -
the same thing should happen today,"
or, "It's not like that thing, and something new should happen today."
And at the same time,
you learn to accept ambiguity and question everything.
And these are all fine, useful skills,
and I'm guessing these are all skills that you learn as Grinnellians
and in all different fields of work.
And you don't have to be a lawyer to use these skills,
and I have no problem with this idea of what it means to think like a lawyer.
But when I think about what it means to me
to think like a lawyer and how I hope my clients view me,
these aren't the first things that come to mind.
Think about it.
If you're asking a friend, "What do you think of the lawyer
who handled your divorce proceeding last year?"
they're not going to say,
"Oh, they were so great at IRAC. I really love that."
No.
Instead, I'm going back to my word about zeal
because to me what I hope to be is a zealous advocate.
The idea of lawyers as a zealous advocate has been around for a while.
One of the first ways it was written out
was in the American Bar Association's Canons of Professional Ethics
back in 1908.
So this is basically -
this organization wrote a draft of ethics rules
that they suggested that other states and other courts
kind of adapt and make their own kind of a sample.
And under Canon 15, they wrote -
you know, under Canon 15 -
which is how far a lawyer may go in supporting a client's cause
they wrote,
"The lawyer owes entire devotion to the interest of the client."
Warm zeal - not just zeal -
"Warm zeal in the maintenance and defense of his rights
and the exertion of his utmost learning and ability
to the end that nothing be taken or withheld from him,
save by the rules of law, legally applied."
All right, so let's break this down for a second.
So, the first part of it -
"The lawyer owes entire devotion to the interest of the client."
Basically that's meaning is -
a lawyer, the one you hire, the one that's appointed to you,
should be on your side.
They're not playing the other side. That makes sense.
Next part - "Warm zeal in the maintenance and defense of his rights
and the exertion of his utmost learning and ability."
Basically, meaning that you should use all of your knowledge,
all of your experience,
to fight as hard and do whatever you can for your client.
Now, obviously there are limits to this.
You can't go out and "Better Call Saul" the situation.
You have to stay within the ethics rules.
But even if something may be unpopular or unconventional,
whatever is best within the context
for your client,
you should do to the utmost of your abilities.
And in the end -
"To the end that nothing be taken or withheld from him,
save by the rules of law."
Meaning that we hope
that if both sides have people playing on their side
and playing as hard as they can, fighting as hard as they can,
that we should have just results,
that we have fair results.
I want to talk a little bit
about how I learned what it means to be a zealous advocate
in the context of my first job after law school.
So after I graduated law school,
my first job was with this great organization in New York City
called the Center for Family Representation.
And what CFR does is -
it's about half attorneys and half social workers,
and we were court-appointed to parents and child abuse and child neglect cases
in Manhattan and Queens.
And so, basically,
if social services in New York was considering intervening in a family,
supervising in the family,
maybe removing the child and placing the child in foster care,
we were people appointed to help them make the arguments
that they should keep their child in their home
or that they've done enough to have the child returned back to their home.
And as you can imagine,
people don't end up in this type of situation
or in family court in general
for really sunny or rosy reasons.
You know, unfortunately, the majority of my clients
were dealing with things like substance abuse and drug addiction
and alcohol, mental health, poverty, domestic violence,
and too often, a combination of many of the above.
But I was doing the type of work I wanted to do,
and I learned what it means to be a zealous advocate,
regardless of the situation I faced.
I mean, to use a poker analogy, you play the cards you're dealt.
Sometimes, I was dealt great cards; sometimes, I was dealt not-so-great cards.
But regardless, my responsibilities and my duties were the same:
to be a zealous advocate and do everything that I could for them.
And while I was going through this process
and learning what it meant to be a zealous advocate for them,
I also witnessed that these parents,
more often than not,
regardless of how good or bad the situation was
that brought them to work with me,
were often a zealous advocate for their own children.
They had strong, passionate feelings
about how their children should be treated,
and it was really encouraging to me.
But I also sometimes noticed
that they didn't always apply that same level,
the same high level of standards of respect and treatment,
to themselves.
And it kind of dawned on me that it's often easier
to be a zealous advocate for those around you than for yourself.
It's often easier, you know, to speak up for your friends and family,
intervene on their behalf,
than maybe face some hard truths about yourself.
And I'm not saying that solutions and issues
like domestic violence and substance abuse are easy.
You can't just flip a switch and fix them.
But understanding your self-worth and demanding more of yourself
is one of those first steps.
And I don't want to sound like a hypocrite up here talking about it
because at the same time,
I began to realize that I was kind of guilty of this myself too.
And in particular, one day just about two years ago,
I was on a crowded, busy New York subway
on my way to work,
and suddenly, I had the first full-blown panic attack of my life.
And to put in context, I want to think a little bit
about where I came from to get to this point.
See, I'm the oldest of three kids in my family.
We're the first generation in our family to go to college.
I did well in high school.
I did things like Mock Trial.
I successfully fought and overturned a book ban at my high school.
Things like this made me think,
"Oh, maybe law - maybe being an advocate would be fun."
I came to Grinnell; I did well here.
I went to a law school; I did well there.
Passed the Bar, got the type of job I wanted,
and I was being an actual lawyer.
But to use another metaphor,
I kind of realized that morning, having that panic attack,
that I was sort of like Wile E. Coyote chasing the Road Runner.
And I was going so fast from goal to goal and step to step.
At the time, I'd started doing what I wanted to do,
and it was the end goal all the time.
I was a mile off the edge of the cliff
and just falling all the way straight down.
Now, thankfully, that situation - I used it as a wake-up call.
I started things like therapy and medication.
I got a lot better about diet and exercise.
I got a little bit better about sleep -
I know that's crazy for Grinnellians, but good sleep helps a lot.
And I'm not perfect.
But it's something I've worked on every day,
and I think I've come a long way.
And it's something I think I'm heading in the right direction about.
And this whole time over these last two years,
it also helped a little bit
to realize that I'm not the only one who struggled these last two years.
I mean, a lot of people in this room, across this country,
have had a real hard time the last couple of years.
And it's kind of hard for me to think about this
and not also connect it with things like "Black Lives Matter" and "Me Too"
and these other situations where on these issues
that people often would speak out about regarding others
but are also speaking up and saying,
"Hey, I deserve to be treated with respect.
I deserve the best too."
So, I'm not sitting here and pretending that I have all the answers about myself.
I don't have the answers for you.
I don't have the answers for this country.
But the only small piece of advice I can try to end with today,
so you can take away from here,
is to learn a lesson I learned
and keep being a zealous advocate for those around you, for those you love.
That's a very Grinnell thing to do.
But in the process, don't forget to be a zealous advocate for yourself.
Thank you.
(Applause)