www.loubar.org 6 Louisville Bar Briefs PROFESSIONAL EXCELLENCE I had one suit, the one my grandfather bought me to wear to my college graduation. It was old school wool and hot, though, and I wouldn’t wear it again until Moot Court two years later. The August air that settled in my un-air-conditioned Old Louisville apartment was heavy with the very specific dog-food-in- the-making smell from the Ralston-Purina plant next to campus that people of a certain age will remember. Streets were still being repaired from the Great Sewer Explosion earlier that year, when hexane from that plant ignited under the streets around campus. The musical CATS had just premiered in London. MTV arrived on cable and – I kid you not – played music videos. Ronald Reagan had just begun his first term as President. It was August 1981, and I was taking my first nervous walk down 3rd Street to the law school at the University of Louisville. Forty- three years, later I’m reminded of that walk nearly every day as I follow the same sidewalk from my parking lot to the law school, now the teacher and not the student. It began when I agreed to teach a class on the fly for a professor who was unable to attend that day. After, she asked if I had an interest in doing more, even full-time. I wasn’t going to practice forever, I knew, and the prospect of now amplifying my counsel and experience by coaching the next generation to serve their own clients was intriguing. I was gratified and humbled when months later, after a rigorous process, I received an offer as a Professor of Practice. I’m preparing now to begin a second academic year in that position. Forty years is a long time to practice law. I was one of the lucky ones. As a First-Gen student (as we call them now), I had no lawyers in my family and only knew what I saw on TV or read in books. The reasons I didn’t have imposter syndrome are because we hadn’t given that a name yet, and, I didn’t know enough to know that I really should have had it. Success in law school was do-or-die for me for the additional reason that my pre-existing obligation to the U.S. Army was binary: Pass the bar or command a tank. There were days during those three years I wished for the rela- tive calm of a tank. I wanted only to be a trial lawyer and was certain I didn’t have the disposition for any other practice. In retrospect, I was right. As it happens, I was blessed for 40 years to do nearly exactly what I had hoped for. I learned and worshipped at the altar of Frank Haddad. I prosecuted, first in the JAG Corps and then in Indiana and Kentucky, and defended. I tried every type of case imaginable, won and lost murder cases and even represented some in- nocent people, the hardest thing to do. I prac- ticed all over the country and in Europe, too. I worked for free sometimes and, at another point, sent monthly bills to a single client for over $1 million a pop. I wrote a brief for the U.S. Supreme Court. (The fact that the Fourth Amendment doesn’t protect Open Fields is not entirely but perhaps a little bit my fault, sorry. You win some, you lose some.) Importantly, I practiced with wonderful pro- fessionals – lawyers and especially those who make lawyering possible – at every stop in my career who made the bad days tolerable and the good ones glorious. Law school is different now. It’s better. Today’s law students are challenged, but are supported and encouraged, as well. The meat grinder, Survivor Island approach of the past is a dinosaur, as are any professors still employ- ing it. There’s an awareness among my new professor colleagues that this is, in fact, 2024 and not 1981, and that both the world and our students have changed. We know more now about how people learn, that some learn differently, and that preparing young men and women to counsel their future clients through trauma shouldn’t involve subjecting the students themselves to unnecessary trauma during their training. Professors meet to discuss the art of teaching and best practices, and to share approaches and successful learn- ing outcomes. Yes, Justice Brandeis is still in repose under the front portico marked by a stone that, depending on the season, bears au- tumn’s leaves or students’ final exam petitions in the form of coins and Animal Crackers. A monumentally thoughtful innovator and scholar, he’d be proud of the thoughtfulness and innovation practiced by the faculty of this school named for him since my graduation. The students are different, too, but they are also the same. I don’t pretend to know the minds of my students, raised since 9/11 in a world in which cell phones and the internet have effectively been public utilities available to almost all. The students are exposed to ideas and worlds, for better or worse, that were invisible to me and my classmates in 1981. Where we giggled our way through Cold War nuclear attack duck and cover exercises in the hallways of our junior high schools, they rehearsed active shooter drills while reading on their phones that just a state or county over there was, in fact, an active shooter, and 14 kids their age died while texting their moms, “I love you.” These same students lost a year or more of classroom education while they watched politicians bungle the pandemic response, and more than a 1 million people die in the supposedly developed United States, the most of any country. They may have lost members of their own families. They may themselves struggle with the disease’s long term effects, and fear they always will. Still, when I stand before them in a classroom, I often see me, 43 years ago. Equal parts excited and terrified. Grasping at a future I had only dreamed of before. Exhausted, sometimes. Bored, frequently. Grateful for my new friends. But substantially less emotion- ally and intellectually mature than these young men and women are today. There’s not a point at which during my three years in law school I had my act together as much as my students do. Maybe they had to grow up faster. (That I was simply an idiot is a possibility as well.) The Kids, as The Who sang, Are Alright.* *As an aside, these poor students have been and will continue to be the victims of my end- less references to music, movies and other pop culture they don’t catch because, to them, I may as well be citing 12th Century Sanskrit tablets. I do mourn this generation’s failure to recognize the foundational legal insights in “A Few Good Men,” “My Cousin Vinny” and, especially and obviously, “Caddyshack.” In 2024, Gen Z will surpass Boomers in the workforce. The average debt load of a gradu- ating law student is now $150,000. They’re in law school at a time in which professors who teach Constitutional Law, Administrative Law and other subjects have to rewrite syllabi that have been gutted by a Supreme Court that many students – I asked them – don’t respect and in which they place no hope of protecting them or their families if they are from marginalized communities or even if they are, simply, women. The women in my classes understand they’re pursuing a law degree in a country in which they have fewer 502-589-7616 LandrumShouse.com A Reputation Built from Results John R. Martin Mediation Services for Civil Matters & Personal Injury Zachary C. Hoskins Insurance Defense Personal Injury Litigation Landrum & Shouse This is an advertisement R. Kent Westberry White Collar Criminal Defense Civil Litigation Bridget M. Bush Government Investigations Election Law (continued on next page) My own vision is that by connecting our law students to the lawyers and law firms downtown from their first semester through graduation we can make 3rd Street the shortest road in the city. Law School Is Different Now. It’s Better. Marc Murphy You can make an impact You can make an impact while living a while living a balanced balanced, , fulfilled fulfilled and and joyful joyful life. life. AND, it’s already in you! AND, it’s already in you! You just need access... You just need access... LET ME SHOW YOU HOW! LET ME SHOW YOU HOW! Doing Well, Doing Good Doing Well, Doing Good Michael J. Drury www.Shift-Coach.net [email protected] 502.592.6009 Results You'll Never Get Over!
