August 2000

Proud to Be a Lawyer

by Evan E. Sperline

On May 26, I administered the Oath of Attorney to a recent law school graduate and candidate for admission to the Bar. As always, the experience caused me to spend a few nostalgic moments ruminating on the challenges of a fledgling legal career, memories not faded by the years. After preparing my comments for the new applicant, I felt that lawyers of every vintage might do well to consider the advice I offered her. Following is the complete text of my remarks:

Amid what is sometimes the dismal drudgery of judicial service, there is occasionally a moment of uplifting delight. Weddings. The adoption of a baby. Such a moment is this, the opportunity to make an official beginning to a lawyer's professional career.

I have been honored and privileged to preside over a good many of these ceremonies, and without exception I feel for the brand-new lawyer a poignant mixture of promise and apprehension, of reward and burden, of joy and melancholy. I feel these contradictory emotions because of recollections, still clear to me, of the pressures and pulls and pleasures and pains of a young lawyer's life.

It is quite a profession you've chosen for yourself, characterized at its essence by dispute — by human conflict. And dispute can be a meat grinder. It is many the young lawyer who has fancied herself immune to the pernicious assaults of stress, only too late to learn the costs and consequences of that mistake.

At the same time, it is a profession dedicated at its heart to helping, to healing, to resolving; a profession steeped in a rich tradition of honor and decency and great human courage. As a lawyer, you will at some time find yourself to be the only instrument standing between a client and the oppressions of government, the abuses of business, the tyranny of ignorance. It is at such times that you will feel the real pride and significance of your work. It is easy, too, for lawyers to forget that each of us is walking in pathways of justice forged by Abraham Lincoln, Clarence Darrow and thousands of other great American men and women. Every lawyer is a steward of that noble tradition.

Today I want to offer you some humble advice. My hope, optimistic as it may be, is that you will remember even a little piece of what I say, and that in some small way it will help prepare you to survive the ordeals and sorrows of your career along with its excitement and elation. First, remember that you are an artisan whose only tools are words. Do all that you can to enhance your skills of communication, not just in speaking and writing, but in listening, the most frequently used and most often neglected skill you will need.

Respect with your whole heart the power of your tools. Words are implements of incredible potential, for building and achieving and progressing, and for damaging and destroying. Use them with the craft, deference and caution that such power and potential demands. Emily Dickinson said this: "A word is dead when it is said, some say; I say it just begins to live that day."

As intentional as you should be in becoming an effective communicator, you should always guard against allowing the law to become your life. When I think of my early career, the most biting regret is the times, usually social gatherings with other lawyers, when I isolated myself with those colleagues and prattled endlessly about this case and that case, this client and that one, disputes and battles and tragedies, as though they were amusing books just read or movies seen. To the exclusion of spouses and friends, at the cost of enriching new acquaintances or experiences, we saturated ourselves in imagined glories and exaggerated accomplishments.

Don't let that happen. Take every opportunity to leave your career in its place, in wholesome proportion to as many non-legal avenues as you can find to grow and prosper and express yourself. It doesn't matter if they're as exhilarating as skydiving or as plain as a picnic. Just demand of yourself that you indulge in the things you love. One way I take shelter from the professional typhoon is poetry. Another of my favorites, Sara Teasdale, offers the best counsel I can imagine for new lawyers. Her short poem is called Barter.

The lawyers whom I truly admire have lived their professional lives in that way. I hope that you will, too.

Evan Sperline has served as a judge of the Grant County Superior Court since 1983. He lives in Lakeview, Washington.

Back to table of contents >>