Dean's Address

Search For Excellence

By Arch K. Schoch

MR. PRESIDENT, DISTINGUISHED FELLOWS OF THE ACADEMY AND YOUR LOVELY LADIES, GUESTS AND FRIENDS OF THE ACADEMY.

You will note that your program does not indicate the title of my address. I feel that I should explain this. Immediately after Ed Savell's learned address at the New York convention in 1977, 1 turned to illustrious Past‑President, Bob Morgan, and asked him if he could suggest a title for my address at this convention. Bob immediately responded that he thought that "Search For Excellence" would be very appropriate for this group. Bob then went on to explain why such a topic would meet the approval of the Academy. At this point, Don Farage commented, facetiously, of course, "Good Lord, don't put the title to your address in the program, or you won't have an audience because the members of this Academy are all such dudes that they believe themselves to be the epitome of excellence. I accepted Bob's and Don's recommendation and I trust that the substance of this address and the lack of notice of its title are acceptable.

So, in lieu of a title for my address in the program, I'll ask you to note in your program that I have provided you with a puzzle - a puzzle of nine points - for those of you without a program, the same puzzle appears here on the podium.

I invite you to try to solve this puzzle during the portions of my address you find wearisome, or should I say‑least intriguing. The object of the problem is to close all nine points with only four straight lines and without lifting your pen. I repeat, the object is to close all nine points with only four straight lines without lifting your pen. The lines may intersect each other.

There is no trick or gimmick in this problem, although the solution will not be readily apparent to all for reasons I shall suggest somewhere in the course of my address here today. Now as for the topic, "Search For Excellence" ‑‑I am a little shaky and awe-struck at the prospect of having to entertain or elocute before such an imposing presence as this.

At first blush it appeared an excellent topic for such an excellent audience but I could not for the life of me formulate or caption a topic for such discourse which would not appear an affront to those of you before me whose membership in this Academy confirms your excellence through the application of Res lpsa.

But I personally love a challenge. Speaking to this group on the subject of "Search For Excellence, ‑‑approaches in degree of challenge‑an economist giving a lecture on capitalism to the Brazilian Coffee Growers Association.

Perhaps ironically, the choice of excellence for my topic constitutes an allegory within my essay. Quite candidly, I accepted Bob's tender of this challenging subject because I was tantalized by my immediate inability to define excellence‑much less ‑impart its meaning to a group of people undeniably imbued with abundant amounts of it already.

I am no longer embarrassed or chagrinned at my inability to define excellence. If it weren't for the time element I would take a five‑minute recess and challenge all of you to come up with a workable definition of excellence that would mean anything at all to a curious Martian who might pop down to Earth with a query of what precisely that term excellence denotes. There is really no help from Webster's... "the fact or state of excelling; superiority; eminence. An excellent quality or feature. " All definitions of excellence utilize other words which are equally lacking in recognizable prototypes in the world of demonstrative reality. One of your first assays in defining excellence might be the rhetorical tail‑chasing I did when I readily came forth with the brilliant banality that excellence is simply a noun used to denote things of the highest quality. This is all neat and tidy until the Martian asks, "What, then, is quality?" Then you go back to Webster's for "quality" and get yourself referred back to "excellence." You try another tack: You take the Martian to the Louvre and lead him through the classic exhibits and enlighten your alien inquisitor to the reality that the smile of the Mona Lisa and the manner in which it is depicted by da Vinci, are imbued with true artistic quality. On the way out, you and the Martian peruse the still delectable form of de Milo's beauty, assign her quality, descend the stairs and walk down les Invalides, eventually pass under the excellent Arc of Triumph and you casually enlighten your wide eyed Martian that the quality of Parisian life he is witnessing is‑by the consensus ‑reputed to be high. For contrast you take your protégé through a student art exhibit on the roadside, and avoiding the insertion of confusing terms of the artist's discipline such as "dynamic symmetry, and the like‑you reveal simply that this or that still life was stillborn in terms of quality compared to the smiling Gioconda he has previously seen, or that the music flowing out of the organ grinder's electric xylophone lacks the quality of the Beethoven exuding from the coffee house door you are passing. But then your highly precocious students asks the inevitable question which shatters your brief pretentions to enlightenment. "Then quality," he asks, "is a thing which exists or does not exist in varying quantities in the things themselves, is it not?" You answer, of course." And then your cosmic friend tenders another query in his quest to colonize the concept of quality. He asks whether or not it is a fact that modern empirical man is equipped to define with scientific exactitude all the elements on earth, according to their properties, atomic weights, etc. Conceding this, you waive the picador and stare at the matador with sabre poised above the hump of the bull you have been skipping around. Thrust comes fatally with the Martian's final request to be told what the intrinsic components of quality are so that he may apply them to objects himself without your having to appraise them for him. At this point you're ready to escort your friend back to his saucer, without dinner. You could easily beg the question and decide quite reasonably that when it comes time for a quality dinner you had planned at Maxim's, you could, without negative result hurry the Martian on down to Hardees or usher him through the golden arches, since he couldn't know the difference. You could even make him content living on a farm if you hadn't shown him Paree. But your abortive attempt to matriculate the Martian through your school of quality should have one positive effect. ..it should have the positively pleasurable effect of frustrating the hell out of you. I can hear you thinking now "Regardless of Mr. Schoch's frustration with the Martian, I know quality when I see it. I know good law from bad, and am pretty good at sizing up the professional quality of a judge or colleague in the practice. What else do I need?" The answer to this may be that you need nothing. But if you are, like myself, even mildly interested in analyzing the subject of how we may each enhance the quality of our own performance, either in our professional or private lives, you may want to continue with me a little further.

Let me try to capsulize for you the gist of what follows in simplest terms, and thereafter elaborate by example.

First, I suggest to you that‑ "excellence" ‑is merely a term denoting the upper extreme on the continuum of another term, i.e., quality.

Second, it is my considered belief that the term quality is one best left undefined, for the simple reason that if quality be defined, it must be defined with logical analogues taken from the past, and this being so, the excellence of tomorrow could not in terms exceed that which has come before.

Finally, let me suggest to you that the excellence of the highest quality is the product of a uniquely human equation. It is the wonderful precipitate resulting occasionally when one combines the elements of intelligence, gumption and the magic ingredient, stuckness.

Now, intelligence you know well; true gumption or grit we have all enjoyed from time to time‑let me define the term "stuckness" as a term of art, in the study of quality.

Stuckness is that beautiful state of affairs where you are faced with a problem for the solution of which you have no ready‑made precedent or instruction manual and no handy analogues, either personal or borrowed, to guide you quietly and conveniently to your end. There is no surcease from the nagging frustration of butting your head against that insurmountable wall; and yet you know there is a way, because you have willed it.

Many of you will find yourselves "stuck" when it comes to solving the puzzle I've furnished you. There is no answer in the appendix of your program. It is my desire that you savor the stuckness I've provided for you‑imagine that your life depends on your ability to solve it by the end of my talk‑but you must solve it while you listen or else miss some valuable point of my catechism and, of least import, the actual solution to the puzzle of nine points.

You will notice I said a beautiful state of affairs. How is it that I can perceive the frustrating phenomenon I have just described as beautiful? The reason is one likened to the pearl sickness. Inserted into the oyster by chance submarine current, or by the device of a crafty oriental, a seed of frustration to the oyster becomes the genesis of a wonderful pearl. Likewise, the seeds of frustration sewn in the minds and spirits of certain exceptional people cause a reaction much like that of the pearl sickness. In mankind and his endeavors, the product of this beautiful affliction may be, ironically, the saving grace, as it may provide the only fountain of youth or regeneration for quality, for excellence.

But before I venture further into the subject of excellence, and how it is some times achieved, let me give you an example of a situation in which I believe quality was attained by a lawyer, if in fact myself, and although in a fashion ancillary to the main stream of professional advocacy. May I repeat‑in a fashion ancillary to the main stream of professional advocacy. Sometime ago in my practice, a rather well‑to do middle‑aged woman, whom I'll refer to as Mrs. Blank, made an appointment and entered my office wishing to discuss a matter of great importance, terming it shyly "domestic matter." Having known the woman's family personally, and the very esteemed reputation of her husband, I made the appointment during which the classically heartbreaking story of middle‑aged marital infidelity was unraveled, ‑ for the umpteenth time. My husband and I, she said, have been married now for nearly 18 years. We have four beautiful children and our marriage up until recent times has been of the highest princess and prince charming idyllic story book quality. I further learned from Mrs. Blank that the change in the previously ideal marriage relationship the seemed to have had its inception in her husband's recent reassignment to Chicago office of his company. Now this lady was from our little High Point city, incident‑ally the furniture capital of the world. Her husband was in a very high executive position with, let's say, XYZ Industries, a very prestigious conglomerate. The wife, my client, because of certain exigencies existing at the time, remained in High Point while her husband worked in the great northern city during the week, utilizing the company aircraft to commute home and back on weekends. However, the weekend reunions had become less and less regular and, finally, regular on a monthly basis. The wife had only suspicions at this stage, but had noted an ominous decrease in Harry's libido which seemed to go against the grain of the old cliché of hearts growing fonder in absentia‑ To determine whether or not in fact my lady client had a legal problem, I set about immediately to have the husband put under surveillance by a highly reputed investigative agency in Chicago. The report, with 15 pages of attachments which was forwarded me within 30 days, with pictures of rendezvous points and amorous M.O., caused me to dread my second conference with Mrs. Blank. When she had digested the reports and dried her eyes, I discussed with her the legal avenues of redress and recommended one thing and another. "But Mr. Schoch," she insisted, "I have no need of Harry's income, and will never need alimony and never want him to know that I have discovered what he had done. I love him too dearly and could never marry anybody else. No, Mr. Schoch, all I want‑ is my Harry back."

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