by Gregory H. Williams
Students come to law schools wanting to be leaders. However, the number of lawyers who are serving as leaders is declining. For example, the number of lawyers who serve in the United States Congress has dropped. In my state of Ohio, the percentage of lawyers serving in the state legislature likewise has declined from around 40% in the mid 1970?s to approximately 20% today. The decline of lawyers in public roles should trouble us as legal educators. We need to support our students in their desire to lead, and we need to devise appropriate programs to prepare students for leadership roles.
The late Robert E. Mathews, former President of the Association of American law Schools and a predecessor of mine at The Ohio State University College of Law, stated in 1953 that "Leadership is an integral function of membership in the legal profession. It is as much of a part of being a lawyer as is appearance in court, office consultation and representation in negotiation." 1 Mathews goes on to argue that, because of our training and understanding of the operation of government, lawyers have a "greater responsibility than other citizens to assume functions of leadership." 2 Despite the passage of time, I believe that most law professors and lawyers today would agree that lawyers have not only the training that enables us to serve the public, but also a professional obligation to step forward and exercise leadership roles in our communities.
I worry that we have forsaken the leadership part of our mission as lawyers. Neither the bar nor law schools have done an adequate job of preparing lawyers to assume public leadership roles. There are many ways that we, as legal educators, can help our students see the value of public leadership and to envision themselves as public leaders. Our neglect of this role has made it easy for some lawyers to allow the economic forces, which do profoundly affect the present day practice of law, to have a greater influence on our professional lives than is appropriate. Every year, as law firms merge and grow, the American Lawyer reports growing profits per partner at America?s largest law firms. I am sure that you, too, have heard recent graduates complain that their value to law firms seems to be judged solely by the number of billable hours they can accumulate by the end of each year.
We have the opportunity to make a difference. We can, through our curricula, the examples we set for our students, the counseling we provide, and the extra-curricular opportunities we offer, teach our students that they have the potential, as lawyers, to have a tremendous effect on their communities. Most important, we can prepare our students to meet the challenges of public leadership, and we can equip them with the skills they will need to become effective leaders.
It is the rare law school that does not justifiably laud its graduates who achieve great prominence in public service and appropriately take credit for helping those graduates develop the skills that bring such success. Yet, law schools have not generally focused attention on fostering leadership education in our curricula. We certainly all believe that we can teach students the fundamentals of oral advocacy. But effective leaders are not just advocates; they must have good listening skills, mediation skills, and the ability to build consensus and to create compromise. These are skills that we can teach in law schools.
Law schools lag behind other professional schools and undergraduate programs in our teaching of these leadership skills. There are nearly 700 leadership development programs in the nation, mostly at the undergraduate level, but with an increasing number of training programs emerging in business and other professional schools. The lack of leadership training in law schools is especially telling when one considers that a law graduate is more likely to be asked to assume leadership positions in their respective communities than is the average undergraduate student. We certainly have a better understanding of the circumstances in which our typical graduates might be called on to lead; we know the roles law graduates have traditionally played in government and public service. As law schools educate a diverse population, we could be preparing leaders to serve a wide range of communities. We should prepare our students to meet those challenges, rather than require our graduates, when they are deciding how to model the public service aspect of their professional behavior, to rely on what they learned about leadership as undergraduates.
I am not advocating that "leadership training" become the dominant focus of law school programs. Nonetheless, there is still a great deal we can do to embrace the opportunities that arise in our classes to expand our students? view of their roles as lawyers. To fully prepare our students, we must identify what knowledge lawyers need in their role as public servants. They certainly need a grounding in substantive law, but they must know more than the relevant cases and statutes. Lawyers as leaders are expected to give advice on political issues and the likely impact of decisions on the public at large. While our classes often include extensive discussion of public policy issues, rarely are those discussions held in the context of how the role of lawyer as leader as opposed to that of advocate may differ. There are opportunities for expansion of what we do in the classroom. The increasing inter-disciplinary nature of our courses is a positive step in assuring that graduates will be as well-rounded as possible. Lawyers who know the law and who are as comfortable with statistical analyses as they are with theoretical policy formation will have the ability to help create consensus among policy makers from a variety of backgrounds. A focus on leadership also has implications for scholarship in the law schools. The study of leadership is necessarily inter-disciplinary. Our faculties can learn much from public policy studies, urban planning, psychology, economics, criminal justice, philosophy, and political science as we confront the challenge of training our students to assume leadership roles.
As faculty members, we can serve as models for careers in public leadership. We cannot let the pressures to produce scholarship divert us from our own obligations as lawyers to serve the public. Law professors are often called upon to assist legislative bodies; we should embrace these opportunities and let our students know that we are doing so. Faculty members can assist with pro bono consultation, amicus briefs, and service on the boards of legal assistance providers. Our students will see this example and recognize that we see ourselves as having an obligation to serve the public. Students also see our own leadership skills when they serve beside us on law school committees. Committee meetings provide a unique opportunity for students to learn how policy is shaped and developed, and it is a chance for law faculty to be positive role models for our students.
Another way we can help train students as leaders is to take advantage of the opportunities we have when students approach us for course selection and career planning advice. When students seek course selection advice, faculty members often and appropriately urge students to think about their specific interests and to take courses that will expose them to the substantive areas that mesh with the students? ultimate career goals. For many students, that advice is too vague. Students seek certainty, and so are easily swayed by hallway chatter that tells them to pick courses based solely on what is on the bar exam or what area of law is presently "hot" with local law firms. Students are certainly more sophisticated today than they were when their professors were students, but there is much counseling and guidance that we as legal educators can and should undertake. As we counsel our students and help them to shape their own professional paths, we should not shy away from the opportunity to impress upon students that they need to prepare themselves to be leaders.
We must also advise our students to think critically about their own strengths and weaknesses. The truly great leader must have self-knowledge. This is another area in which law schools can help students develop into leaders. Most students do not have a well-formed sense of what they want to do as lawyers. As we advise students about their possible career paths, we can help them assess themselves so that they can better match their interests and strengths to their career choices. Some schools have provided an opportunity for students to take tests to help gauge their talents; these can be helpful in directing students to different areas of legal work. While I am not advocating any particular test or assessment, I believe we need to encourage students to be more introspective about their choice of one area of the law over another. Self-assessment would contribute to students making better choices about their careers. Students could gain a better sense of what areas of law, once they are enmeshed in the realities of practice, would best further their individual career goals.
Law students have tremendous opportunities to develop leadership skills outside the classroom setting. For example, student government and other student organizations provide unique opportunities for students to hone their leadership skills, including the art of listening to differing viewpoints. When students serve in leadership positions (whether it be on a law journal, clinic, public service activity, or student organization), there is an opportunity for law schools to encourage students to think critically about the responsibilities of leadership. Street Law programs, public service activities, and clinics allow a reaching out to the communities in which many students will work after graduation. These programs are a fertile training ground for leaders. We should encourage faculty advisors of student organizations and student services personnel to help the students they advise learn leadership skills. Often, we see a poorly run student organization as, at most, an inconvenience. We should recognize that we can help student leaders learn how to facilitate meetings, set agendas, and achieve consensus. Student activities provide "teaching moments" for leadership, if the law school faculty and staff are committed to work with the students.
Leadership training, of course, does not end with the J.D. degree. If we have been successful teachers, the lessons we have taught will resonate in our graduates throughout their careers. Leadership is truly an enterprise in which one learns by doing. Embracing leadership as a life-long professional obligation will both enrich lawyers? personal satisfaction with their careers and serve our society. We must therefore form an alliance with lawyers and the bar associations to ensure that our graduates continue to develop their leadership potential even after they have left law school.
If we succeed in our efforts to train leaders, all of society gains, and we as legal educators come closer to meeting the goals of legal education suggested by Harold Laswell and Myers McDougal over fifty-six years ago. They saw "[t]he proper function of our law schools . . . as contribut[ing] to the training of policy-makers for the ever more complete achievement of the democratic values that constitute the professed ends of American polity." 3 In the world of my youth, that was much more theory than practice. As a mixed-race boy growing up in central Indiana, I felt those democratic values were often filtered through a single lens. Some of the lawyers in my hometown were revered as leaders because of their ostensibly clandestine involvement with the Ku Klux Klan. Today, diversity efforts have resulted in much broader ethnic, gender, and racial representation in our law school communities. We have the ability to train a much broader spectrum of people who more accurately reflect our society. We must seize the moment and prepare our students to lead our society in the future.
* This article appeared in the April 1999 AALS Newsletter.