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Dean Henry H. Perritt, Jr.'s Welcome to New Students at Chicago-Kent
August 18, 1997

Good Morning:

I am Hank Perritt, the dean at Chicago-Kent. I am almost as new here as you are -- I have been on the job since the first of June.

I would like to welcome you to Orientation, to welcome you to law school, to welcome you in particular to Chicago-Kent and -- most important of all -- to welcome you to the legal profession.

Are you excited? Are you nervous? Well, everybody in the legal profession remembers this time on their first day of law school orientation. I was thinking about my experience in that regard. I remember well the auditorium at Georgetown University Law Center, which looks somewhat like this one. I must admit I do not remember a thing that the dean said. Maybe that will be different in this case and maybe not, but I expect you will remember the day and the week.

Law school can be one of the most interesting intellectual experiences of your lives, and it also can be a lot of fun. I would encourage you to let it be fun, and to embrace its challenges. Law school is a little bit like a college cafeteria in the following sense: Nobody is supposed to like the food at a college cafeteria. Even when you get served something that is really good, you are not ever supposed to admit it. You are suppose to complain about the college cafeteria and think about what an ordeal it is.

The culture of law students, for a century at least, has been very much the same. People are not supposed to enjoy law school, but in fact, there will be some moments when something you learn in the classroom is interesting and exciting. There will be some moments when an experience that you have with your classmates or your professors is fun. I would encourage you to enjoy those moments. There will be a lot of those moments, and they will far outnumber the times when you are anxious or nervous or frustrated.

Chicago-Kent is a special place to come to law school. I can perhaps speak more directly to Chicago-Kent's specialness than somebody else because I just recently decided to come here myself. In fact, along about the same time you were making up your minds about where to go to law school, I also was making up my mind where to come to law school in my decision to be dean here.

Now, to tell you a little bit about why I think Chicago-Kent is special and why this is a very good place to be right now in law school: Chicago-Kent is the second oldest law school in Illinois. It was begun in 1888 as two different law schools. One was as the Chicago College of Law and the other was the Kent School of Law. Those two law schools merged and by 1895 they already were innovative. They had some of the first minority law students in the State of Illinois, and the combined Chicago-Kent Law School had one of the first female law students. By the 1920's, Chicago-Kent was well established in the landscape of Chicago as an innovator. It was innovator in that era because it made it possible for a lot of poor people who otherwise would not have had access to the legal profession to become lawyers.

Sometime when you have an opportunity, I would invite you to go into that courtroom across the hall. It's named for Judge Abraham Lincoln Marovitz, who is still alive. If you ever get a chance to meet him and talk to him (he is a very vigorous 94-year-old), he has a wonderful story to tell. He tells about how he came to Chicago-Kent in 1919, even though he did not have any money. He wanted to be a boxer and that is the way he thought he would make his career and be able to lift himself out of poverty. He had a part-time job and his boss from that part-time job encouraged him to go to law school. But young Marovitz said, "I cannot afford that. I never could afford to do anything like that." His boss then said, "I'll tell you what, I'll give you an extra 50 cents a week, and I will put that aside so that you can meet the tuition at Chicago-Kent." Judge Marovitz then went to see the people at Chicago-Kent, and they worked out a special plan so that he would be able to pay his tuition on an extended plan basis, so he was able to go to law school. He then went on to have a very distinguished career.

Judge Marovitz was the first Jewish State Senator in the State of Illinois; he fought in the Second World War; he was the first Jewish Federal Judge from this area. He had a distinguished legal career, and he has continued to be very loyal to Chicago-Kent ever since then because of this institution and its tradition of doing innovative things that made it possible for him to be a lawyer and a State Senator and a Judge.

There are many other stories like that. What they all signify is that this always has been a place that was innovative. In recent years, this has been a place that was innovative because it had put together two different strands in American Legal Education. American law schools are different from law schools in Europe and from most other parts of the World. They are different because they are graduate schools, for the most part affiliated with universities; and they are also professional schools. Chicago-Kent takes that dual role seriously, and has been more successful in managing that dual role of graduate school and professional school than almost any other place.

It plays the graduate school part by encouraging first-rate theoretical scholarship from its faculty. This law school was rated 28th in the country in terms of the quality of scholarship from the faculty. There is no better place, in terms of cutting-edge-thinking about the law.

In that respect it's faithful to the university graduate school tradition. But it is also a professional school, and it takes it role as a professional school seriously. This law school pioneered really intensive legal research and writing programs and is still one of very few law schools in the country that has required legal research and writing courses in every single year of law school.

It is one of the few law schools in the country that takes its legal writing program seriously enough to have regular faculty teaching in it and to have the legal writing instructors (who are called "visiting assistant professors" here) also teach regular courses and to encourage them to engage in scholarship.

Not only that, this law school has the most innovative clinical program in the country. We call it the "Law Offices" Program. What is so unusual about it is that it takes fee-generating clients and brings actual practitioners from the practicing bar to work with students from the clinical program. So it is a mainstream clinical program. If you are involved with that you actually learn mainstream law practice, including issues of practice development, how you charge fees to clients, and what to do with the client who can't pay the fee.

Chicago-Kent also takes its role as a professional school seriously because it has been an innovator in understanding the relationship between law and computers. I recall being in Austria at a conference on the use of computers in the law in the mid 1980s. Time after time people in that conference -- primarily Europeans -- said, "Now there is a law school in Chicago that has really been a pioneer in showing how to use computer hardware in the classroom and computer software in the legal education process. Its name is Chicago-Kent." So a third of the way around the world, ten years ago people were talking about Chicago-Kent's commitment to practical, professional education in the sense of using technology in the class room.

So for a long time, from the time that the school was started, to the time that Judge Marovitz used this school as a way for a poor boy to enter the profession, to the more recent time when work with law and computers has been a practical purpose of this school, this has been a place that combines the theoretical with the practical to equip people to be leaders of the bar and leaders of society.

But that does not do you much good -- either this orientation to the practical or the orientation to the theoretical -- if the focus is on the past, if the focus is on yesterday's practice of law, yesterday's doctrine, yesterday's practice skills. It only does you in the class of 2000 good if we are focusing on the practice issues of tomorrow, the practice issues of the 21st century.

Let me give you some examples of how we are doing that -- how we will continue to do that -- while you are here. One example is something new called the Institute for Science, Law and Technology. I am responsible for leading that for the whole university. We started that because of our realization, here at Chicago-Kent and more broadly at Illinois Institute of Technology, that many of the most difficult and interesting problems that confront society arise because of changes in technology. That's been true for a thousand years.

Maritime law was first developed and commercial law was first developed because of changes in the technology of sailing ships. Think about tort law (and you will learn more about that in the next six months). That was revolutionized because of the automobile and the railroad. Contract law was revolutionized because of the industrial revolution -- revolutions in factory and distribution technology. So the importance of technology is not something new to the law; it always has been central. We are in a special position to help think about that and to help prepare you for the 21st century because we are the only law school in the country that is part of a technological university. MIT doesn't have a law school, Cal Tech doesn't. Rice and Worcester don't. We are the only technological university with a law school.

What that means is that we are well positioned to think about the special challenges for society that arise from the use of technology. For example, you have read about cloning, about the sheep that were cloned recently. Well, one of the world experts on the legal implications of cloning is right here on our faculty -- Lori Andrews. Biotechnology is the first theme we are going to explore in this Institute for Science, Law and Technology with a program in early December that focuses not just on cloning but on reproductive technology changes of all kinds. It begins to get people to grapple with the ethical and the legal issues that arise from that. Should there be a property right in a body organ? If someone offers a kidney for transplantation into somebody else. Should that person have a property right to be able to sell the kidney? Most people think the answer is "No." But it is not clear why the answer should be "No."

Another technological challenge is information technology. That one happens to be my field, and is the second theme in this Institute for Science, Law and Technology. The Internet presents special problems for law because all the world's legal systems are based on geography. They are based on nation states that have geographic boundaries. Now comes the Internet which is completely indifferent to geography. How do you regulate it? Do you invent a new legal system to regulate the Internet or will it somehow become subject to old legal systems. That is the second theme that our Institute for Science, Law and Technology is going to explore.

The third theme has to do with Environmental Science. Now that is not a new issue, but some of the opportunities and some of the policy possibilities are new. Is it possible to take a Superfund site in South Chicago and develop it in a way that not only doesn't cost money from the public treasury, but that actually makes money for the people who come in and develop that site. What should we do about rainforest development? There is a growing body of evidence that rainforests located in the Amazon or in sub-Sahara Africa are important to the whole world because they generate oxygen. Yet, traditional legal theories would say that the country where a rainforest sits has absolute total sovereignty over what happens with that rainforest. Want to cut it down? That is perfectly fine if the country where the rainforest sits wants to do that. So there is a need for some new legal mechanisms that will somehow reconcile the global needs that protect the rainforest with the traditional sovereignty of these countries where the rainforest sits, and that is a third issue that our Institute for Science, Law and Technology will be exploring.

So one thing that we are doing, that will help bring together theories and practical skills training for your careers in the 21st century, is this Institute for Science, Law and Technology that explores the intersections of technology and law and ethics in the political system.

But almost every example that I just gave had a global context. So my second new initiative is to explore the global context of law. We are calling it the Global Law and Policy Initiative. It also seeks to bring together lawyers, business decision makers, and policy decision makers so that we can have a more productive dialogue.

Now, some funny things have been happening in the international arena. Two years ago, you would have gone one place to talk to somebody about foreign policy, and if you wanted to talk to someone about business policy, you would have gone somewhere else. If you wanted to talk about international law there would have been two kinds: (1) public international law and (2) private international law. You would have gone to a third and a fourth place to talk to people about that. Totally separate disciplines, but they are coming together now. Think about foreign policy and business policy. Now, the President of the United States threatens trade sanctions against France when Europe opposes a merger between Boeing and McDonnell-Douglas. That would not have happened fifteen years ago because the two areas would have been separate, but now foreign policy has come together with business policy.

Fifteen years ago, there would have been a complete separation between public international law and business policy, but think about PepsiCo's withdrawing from Burma because of human rights violations and private boycotts that were created as a result of the human rights violations in Burma.

So we have these four previous and separate areas that are converging. I can tell you from my own recent experience helping to build a Rule of Law in Central and Eastern Europe that there is a great need for legal ideas, additional intellectual capital in the international arena. This law school is especially well situated to provide that, and we are going to be doing that through our Global Law and Policy Initiative.

Now, these are just two examples of our commitment to professionalism and to professional skills training in a way that it extends into the future, in a way that it makes us a law school ahead of its time instead of a law school that is behind the times. Our excellence in that regard, the excellence of our commitment to professionalism and professional skills training, is regularly recognized. Just two weeks ago, the American Bar Association at its annual meeting gave this law school an award for Professionalism Day, for focusing on the ethical and the practical concerns of practicing lawyers.

Recently, as well, the American Bar Association gave this law school a national award as the Public Interest Law School of the country. So, we are well known for our commitment to the theoretical as well as to practice.

But, of course, all of this has meaning only against the context of the legal profession. It is particularly important on this your first day of law school, your first day at Chicago-Kent, your first day on the way to becoming a member of the legal profession, to think about what it means to be an American lawyer.

To be an American lawyer is a very special thing. There is a lot of cynicism around about being an American, and there certainly a lot of cynicism around about being an American lawyer, but I can tell you this: When you go outside America and when you go to Bosnia or Hungary or Russia, there is no synergism about being an American lawyer. For people in Bosnia and Hungary and Russia, American law and American lawyers are what they want more of. Our systems is the model for a Rule of Law as a bulwark of democracy.

It is worth reflecting on our profession. One thing about the profession is that it is remarkably diverse. It has always been diverse, but it is getting more so. There are successful, happy, fulfilled lawyers who litigate in the courtroom. There are also happy, successful, and fulfilled lawyers who spend their time counseling clients who are in trouble. Most of the time of lawyers who have domestic relations practices is spent not in the courtroom, but in the office helping people make decisions about how put their lives back together. Happy, successful and fulfilled lawyers also spend as much time in the legislative chamber helping to write law as they do in the courtroom or the office counseling clients. A growing proportion of American lawyers spend their time not in law firms, but in corporations, government organizations, or non-profit organizations helping to make business and public policy decisions informed by their legal training.

So it really does not matter in the very long run whether what you really like to do is to talk to other people or to write, or to do research, or to argue; whether you are most creative thinking profound theoretical thoughts; or whether you are most creative helping another human being solve a life crisis.

There is not only room for you in the legal profession, there are multiple examples of how you can be successful and happy using any of these skills.

And part of why we are here as faculty and staff is to help you learn about the law and also to help you learn about yourselves, so that you can understand how best to fit your own unique strengths and weaknesses as human beings within all the different opportunities which the profession offers you.

Now, there is another thing to be said about the legal profession. It is a powerful profession. Lawyers have real power. They have real power because of two aspects of the Anglo-American legal tradition. One is its adversarial nature and the other is the common law tradition.

The adversarial tradition gives you as a lawyer power because it means that every time a court decides a case and every time a court adopts a new legal theory, it does not come from judge, but rather, it comes from the lawyer. The creativity in legal doctrine comes from you when you represent a client or write a brief or file a complaint. Indeed every time that you write a complaint or write a brief you are making law and exercising power.

But not only that. You have power because you give advice to clients. Clients don't come to see lawyers unless they want advice and at least some small part of them is willing to take that advice. So every time you give advice to a client, the likelihood is great that you are going to be changing somebody else's behavior. The capacity to change human behavior is real power in the society.

Our commitment to you is to help you learn about the law so that you have this kind of power. Our commitment to you also is to work with you in a continuing dialogue for your three years experience -- and hopefully beyond as you enter the profession. We want you to understand how to use that power as an American lawyer well, so that society ends up better off because you were a lawyer. Because you took this first step. Because you came here today.

I look forward to working with you in that endeavor.

Thank you.

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