Orientation Address 1998

Henry H. Perritt, Jr.

Nervous?

Excited? Good!

I’d like to welcome you to orientation, to Chicago-Kent, and—what’s most important—to the profession of law.

This is an exciting place to study law. Our brochure refers to Chicago-Kent as a law school ahead of the times. What you may not realize is that Chicago-Kent has always been a law school ahead of the times. It was first started by some professors and judges who, among other things, wanted to have a law school in Illinois that would admit the sons and daughters of immigrants—who weren’t admissible in other law schools.

In the early part of this century it was the first law school in Illinois to admit women to study law.

Through that period it was a pioneer in creating opportunities for African-Americans to study law.

This was the first law school in the United States to take legal writing seriously. It still is a model for law schools all over the rest of the country. Its legal writing program continues throughout law school and uses full time faculty to teach it.

It was the first law school to take a clinical program, something that was common in law schools, and bring it into the mainstream with the idea of a fee generating clinic.

It was the first law school to discover the reality that computers would make a big difference in law practice and to legal institutions and eventually to the legal problems that lawyer’s clients have.

So we have been innovating a long time. Now we are ahead of the times because of our Institute for Science Law and Technology and some of the things that we are doing in the international area. We started last fall with Ambassador Richard Holbrooke in this room and ended the summer in our International program with the Chinese Ambassador to the United States and the Secretary of Commerce for the United States both in this room. But being ahead of the times is something that goes much deeper than what we were doing last year or this year in terms of particular programs or particular aspects of the legal writing program or the clinical program.

This law school also is about people, about the human part of you and your predecessors. I would like to tell you two stories that illustrate that.

In 1945, a young woman by the name of Esther Rothstein graduated from Marquette. She got a job as a secretary to a lawyer in Chicago. She did a really good job from the beginning. A few months into her tenure as secretary to this lawyer he said "Esther why don’t you go to law school?" and she said "That’s ridiculous. You know there is no place for women in the law." and he said "Well you can make a place for women in the law," and she said "Well nobody will let me in. First of all, there aren’t any law schools that will let women in and even it I got in, what would I do with a law degree. I couldn’t be a part of a law firm." and he said "Yes, there is a law school that will let you in. It’s called Chicago-Kent."

So Esther Rothstein applied to Chicago-Kent. She was admitted later in 1945, graduated as one of two women in her Class in 1949. Do you know what she did after that? She went on to become the President of the Chicago Bar Association, to organize the Women’s Bar Association of Illinois, to come up with the idea, and then to implement it, of having special scholarships for women in the law.

Now that may not seem like such a big deal when you look around you. 50% of you, roughly, are female now. Hadn’t been that way until relatively recently. One reason it is that way today is because of people like Esther Rothstein who went to law school here.

Just over 50 years later, the son of refugees from the Soviet Union, a guy by the name of Alex Rozman, applied and was admitted to Chicago-Kent. Matter of fact, you may have met him outside he was manning the registration desk. Last spring, Alex became involved in an activity known as Project Bosnia. Alex, along with some of his fellow law students and some undergraduate students from IIT’s engineering school, decided that even while they were still students they could make a difference to help establish a rule of law in the former Yugoslavia. Alex’s particular part in that was to use the Internet and email to find people, young people, in the Serb area of Bosnia, which until that time had pretty much been closed off and isolated. Dominated by people who were indicted war criminals. Alex, using email, found a group of some 20 students and others who were willing to help Chicago-Kent students set up an international press center in Banja Luka that would permit independent journalists to communicate with each other and the outside world by using the Internet. Now this was a time when the Serb areas of Bosnia, so called Republika Srpska, were essentially impenetrable to outside forces and outside people. But Alex used the Internet to find these young people that would help us build an Internet server and a center in Banja Luka, Bosnia, for the independent media. Alex and his colleagues, students here at IIT and at Chicago-Kent, then proceeded to get Sun Microsystems, Motorola, and other companies to donate equipment. Last April a group of those students went to Banja Luka in Bosnia, by themselves, and set this up. That Internet server is available on the Internet right now.

These two stories, 50 years apart, illustrate two important things about American lawyers and about this law school’s commitment to help you carry on the tradition of American lawyering.

One thing they illustrate is that lawyers -- and even law students before they become lawyers—have the capacity to make a difference in the world. It is lawyers who led the American Civil Rights Revolution. It is American lawyers to whom the rest of the world looks to design political and legal structures to contain ethnic hatreds so they don’t spill over into violence. It is lawyers, every time they litigate a case, who have the opportunity to change the law, because the ideas for changing the law come not in the first instance from the judges or the legislators; they come from the lawyers who advance a particular position on behalf of their clients.

It is lawyers who participate in transactional work for their clients because every time they do a business deal or every time they help organize a new corporation or non-profit organization, it is lawyers who are serving as architects of new structures in the society.

It is lawyers who have the power to change things every time they counsel an individual client. That client wouldn’t be seeking a lawyer’s advice unless the client was inclined to follow it. Every time the advice is given the lawyer exercises the power to change the individual’s behavior and conduct.

Ms. Rothstein understood that. The imprint of her power to change things is all over Chicago and all over this room.

Alex Rozman understood that even before he graduated from law school. The imprint of his power is in a freer press in Republika Srpska in the war torn country of Bosnia. One thing those examples reinforce is that lawyers can make a difference. In other words, lawyers can change things. Esther Rothstein left her imprint on the law and you can see it in this room. Look around you. Almost half of you are women. That wouldn’t be the case in this city except for what Esther Rothstein did. Alex Rozman left his imprint a third of the way around the world in a place called Bosnia. He understood that part of what it means to be an American lawyer is about the capacity to make a difference and to change things and that that can start even before you graduate from law school.

There is another lesson in their two stories and that is that law is diverse. Some of you like to argue; there is room for you in the law; you’ll make great litigators. Some of you like to do research in the library and like to write long documents reflecting the fruits of that research; there is room for you in the law because law is scholarly and depends on research. Some of you want to run for office; there is room for you in the law as well because a legal education is good preparation for public service.

Some of you are empathetic; you relate well to other human beings. There is room for you also in the law even if you don’t want to do any of those other things. The law depends upon people who are able to represent individual clients with empathy for their individual problems.

There is room for you in this profession regardless of your particular strengths and weaknesses, in terms of your own personality. One of the things that law school is about is to help you understand yourselves better, to understand better what you like and don’t like, what you are good at and not so good at. At the same time that you are learning more about the profession that you can make informed judgments as you go along about the best fit between you and this profession.

The choice that you will make always will be yours. You ought to remember that it’s not your co student’s choice, it’s not your parents choice, its your choice as to where you want to fit in this profession.

This of course is only the starting point of what will be a 30 or 40 year experience in the profession. We are committed to help you be effective in the profession as it will exist throughout your career. Part of that commitment is to care about you as people. To help you understand yourselves and to help you deal appropriately with some of the stresses and anxieties that inevitably will be a part of law school.

But there is more to it than that; law also is about responsibility. Lawyers have responsibility, law students have responsibility, and law schools have responsibility.

Part of our responsibility as a law school is to make sure that we are ahead of the times. We must educate you for the practice as it will exist in the 21^st Century. That is why we are going to expect you, as you work your way through law school, to make everyday use of information technology—in particular, the Internet and the World Wide Web. When you get into the practice environment you are going to make everyday use of it there and you might as well start now. That will put you ahead of the game when you graduate from law school and are admitted to the bar.

The second thing that we have responsibility for is to help you understand the kinds of professional responsibilities that you will have as a lawyer. That includes a commitment to civility and professionalism as you deal with each other—even when you disagree with each other, and as you deal with us, and with clients. It includes coming to class on time and being prepared for class.

It also includes something else that I particularly want to caution you about. This is an exciting place, as I have suggested. All of us who already are members of the Chicago-Kent community pride ourselves on the fact that there are exciting cutting edge things going on here. We want you to be involved in those. Everything that we do, every new initiative that we start is appropriate only to the extent that it is student centered and provides opportunities for you to become involved. I think my responsibility as Dean of the Law School is to try to make sure that there is a constant flow of new and stimulating things that are available to the faculty and the students.

In becoming involved in those things you must not lose sight of something else. I have worked with all kinds of different lawyers. I said law is a diverse profession and I have worked with a lot of different kinds of personalities. I have also worked with lawyers in diverse settings, negotiating labor agreements, putting together advice for the President of the United States, litigating cases in federal and state court, designing business deals and other kinds of organizational arrangements.

Without exception the lawyers who have been most effective in all of those different environments have been the lawyers who had internalized almost to an instinctive level what they learned in the first year of law school. The lawyers who had been most creative and most effective in all those different settings were the ones who really understood the conceptual foundation of contracts, torts, property, procedure, and criminal law. The thing that makes the really good lawyers stand out is not their mastery of the esoteric specialized stuff but their mastery of basic torts, contract, property, procedure, and criminal law concepts. Its only if you have a deep appreciation of those concepts, the things that you learn in the first year that you have the capacity to be really creative and effective. Not only that, those things are important in helping you do well on the bar exam. You have both a purely short term utilitarian reason to focus on those things as well as the longer term issued if you want to be really good in this profession. Of course, the specialized areas are what makes law exciting for many of us but what will make us good lawyers are the basics that you get exposed to in the first year.

All of us here look forward to working with you. This will be an exciting experience. It will from time to time be fun. When you feel some sense of excitement and enjoyment welling up in you, don’t suppress it, let it be fun. This can be fun. You will learn from each other, you’re going to be changing as you are going through this process.

It surely will be one of the great intellectual experiences of your lives.

I look forward to working with you.

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