Dean's Address

Having at the first interview imparted to her what my fee would be in the matter, and not having an eye batted in reaction thereto, I was not a little disenchanted with having to disclose to Mrs. Blank the fact that she did not have a legal problem and accordingly had very little reason for being in my office. I had had only modest success in the area of marriage counseling and none virtually in either religion or psychiatry, and accordingly, deemed myself incompetent to manage my client's or her husband's affair any further. "But Arch," she persisted, "I've heard so much of the wonderful things you can accomplish, and I know that if you set your mind to it, you will be able to get my Harry back." "But lawyers," I explained ‑with all the soothing I could muster ‑"are all trained to get rid of husbands, not to retrieve them. " Her response was one of the most difficult types to handle‑female determination‑ Without further ado, she brought forth her check book and drafted out the sum I had named as my fee. Before I could remonstrate with her further, she directed me both to retain the amount and contact her in due course with the solution to her problem. We made our adieus, I with my covert intention of returning her draft with a letter of regret and withdrawal.

I know many of you before me now have shared the distasteful experience of having to advise one with a grave human problem of the fact that there is no legal shibboleth to its solution. This was a fine and gracious woman. With her faithful, forgiving and hopeful nature she had presented to me a veritable dilemma. Proverbially, the dilemmatic situation is made graphic through the utilization of, once again‑the bull. This time you're in the arena facing his snorting nostrils, decimating hoofs and, most fearful, the two horns‑one or the other of which you must apparently elect for impalement purposes. On one of the horns training in on me vicariously through Mrs. Blank's plight was the point that if nothing were done legally, the inertia of human nature would automatically prolong the husbands affair and my client's distress, On the other hand‑or horn‑if legal proceedings were instituted‑and this 'til‑now ideal husband thus exposed‑the result would be the near‑certain ruination of a marriage and even more pain for my client. The bull followed me home. It pawed at my dinner table and the following day, Saturday, chased me over 18 holes of our Willow Creek Golf Club. It bristled at me unpricked when I should have been attending church the next day and made menacing passes at me during the ensuing work week while 1, much to my own surprise, neither returned the draft nor wrote my‑Dear Jane letter. I grew to dislike the bull. In my frustrated state I looked from one horn to the other and found that the thing I disliked most about this bull was not his menacing nature or pose. Rather, what I detested was his apparent ability to make me choose between two painful alternatives. To wind up this paralegal parable, let me say that I did find the solution. With hindsight now assisted by a philosophical work by Robert Pirsig, I realize that my success with the bull was wrought neither through evasion nor attack, but rather through an unconventional maneuvering, not of the bull himself, but rather of his proverbial portrayal. More about Pirsig's philosophy, which is incidentally an essay on quality, later. But let it suffice for now to suggest that we have become conditioned to assume many false stances or beliefs,‑the proverbial horns of dilemma being only one. When we see these horns emerging from a situation we have been taught to recognize as a‑dilemma, involving painful repercussions at both ends, we have been pathetically accustomed to feel powerless to do anything but elect which painful point we will be stuck with. There is, mind you, a third alternative, or option to be rhetorically precise. Yes, when the two horns are charging down your corridors of escape there is a third option you can employ to avoid disaster altogether‑‑YOU CAN THROW SAND INTO THE EYES OF THE BULL -Now Pirsig coined that image; but looking back on the case of poor Mrs. Blank, I realize now that that is just what I did. Goaded by a nagging desire to spare Mrs. Blank the pain of her domestic dilemma, and catalized by a sometimes errant penchant for the paralegal, I presented Mrs. Blank at her second conference with me the solution to her problem‑THE PAIL OF SAND FOR THE EYES OF HER BULL_ In this case the solution was a two‑page letter written under the curious nom de plume of‑ "Facts Coordinator" for XYZ Industries, ‑addressed to Mr. Blank, and if you will afford me your indulgence for a small didactic diversion into personal memorabilia, let me read to you the letter that Mr. Blank received:

Dear Mr. Blank:

As you know, you hold a very sensitive position with XYZ Industries. The personal image that you have created is certainly excellent on the surface; that is, the conscientious executive and dutiful husband who spends his weekends with his family in North Carolina.

However, when it was determined that your residence was To be changed to Chicago, a cursory check was ordered on your personal activities.

The facts pertaining to your personal activities which were disclosed leave something to be desired for one in a high executive position. A few of the details of this investigation are documented on the attached sheets to enable you to properly evaluate your position.

This information remains with me as Coordinator, and will not be disclosed to anyone or become part of your personal record. You are admonished not to disclose the contents of this letter or its attachments, to Miss R, either directly or indirectly.

As Coordinator, I do make certain positive recommendations which you are requested to fulfill forthwith:

1. Sublease your Apartment 25‑C at the Hamilton House;

2. Relocate Miss R in some position that is outside the XYZ Group, and cease all association with her;

3. Make arrangements for your family in North Carolina to move to some suitable place in Chicago suburbia;

4. Join some nice Country Club where your associations will be fitting to the standards of your position; and

5. Live an exemplary family life, free from illicit excursions with the opposite sex.

You are notified that the surveillance has been terminated. Ninety days from the date hereof, it will be necessary to resume the surveillance to ascertain whether or not the requested recommendations have been fully complied with.

If I may digress momentarily, I cannot understand why executives from the south and west who come to Chicago believe that different moral standards exist here as distinguished from their places of residence. It is astonishing to observe young executives who have strived so diligently to reach the top who thoughtlessly are willing to gamble their reputations and positions by indulging in extra-marital affairs.

Your cooperation is solicited, and you may be assured that if the recommendations are accepted there will be no reference made to this situation. Signed: Facts Coordinator, XYZ Industries.

Within shortly over a month of having received this letter, Mr. Blank had complied with all five of the mandates issued by the cryptic Facts Coordinator for XYZ, yours covertly but truly. As a caveat or apology at this point, let me emphasize that I in no way espouse the devious method of reconciling the Blanks' marriage as possesed of intrinsic moral quality. I tender it to you merely as an allegory, a personal parable not to portray what quality is, but rather how quality or excellence is sometimes achieved. The manner in which it is achieved most often is by the profound experience I enjoyed in handling Mrs. Blank's case. The philosopher and writer I referred to earlier, Robert Pirsig, terms this experience appropriately ‑the phenomenon of "stuckness"‑. Stuckness may be, for us legal technicians and practitioners, the very essence of our creative process. It is the occasion which luckily happens upon our scene with sufficient periodicity to re‑enliven us. It is on those occasions where legal precedent is either non‑existent or to no practical avail. It is that situation where we have an initial tendency to look to Martindale for a young B.V. on whom we can plop this distasteful dilemma, or the situation where we know there is no pat legal answer, and farm out the hypothetical to someone else for the dual motive of confirming our negative conclusions and/or furnishing us with the fashionable juris prudential rubric, or bull if you will, for the third and final time.

To attest the quality of the solution to the case of Mrs. Blank, let me boast of having received annually Christmas cards from her expressing continued gratitude for part the I played in helping Harry home. She assures me that hers and Harry's marriage is still deliriously happy and in part as a result of the hopefully benevolent but definitely crafty fraud of your humble Dean.

Before I end my catachism on the subject of the blessed event of stuckness, MOTHER OF EXCELLENCE‑ I must share with you one ‑final parable or should I say allegory because it was handled by my younger son and involved our local vice and narcotics squad in High Point and the problem with which we all have to contend with periodically, the perennial problem of mendacity . The case involved the legal area of search and seizure. Our clients were two young men charged with felonious possession of the controlled substance‑marijuana.-To those among you living in a more enlightened jurisdiction‑ that is 'where marijuana is being decriminalized ‑a marijuana indictment may not seem too odious‑But let me assure you‑grass‑is not greener in North Carolina‑where the marijuana charges brought against our defendants could have brought them collectively 20 years imprisonment‑ Those of you who have done any work in the area of drug defense realize that there are two cardinal rules or maxims which apply in the area of contraband charges. One, your client is always guilty, and two, if you are absolutely certain that all the elements of entrapment took place to tempt, confound and inculpate your client, and you have every confidence of being able to compose and deliver through your persuasive art the strongest possible summation in favor of a positive finding on the issue of entrapment, enjoy that confidence‑then forget it-.In drug cases, if the search cannot be attacked successfully, most likely your client will be paying you principally for your appeal for mercy in a guilty plea or plea bargain.

In this particular case, our two boys, George Stalder and Tommy Logan, had parked their van in a rural area where they sat with three other young men bartering on the subject of the van's cargo, a little over 10 pounds of gold‑which, for the nonheads among you, is drug slango for Columbian grass or marijuana‑ It was a cold winter's night and all the windows to the van were tightly shut. It was dark in and outside of the van; and the contraband was wrapped in hermetically sealed plastic containers, swaddled in an impermeable raincoat hidden from view beneath the tire well in the interior of the van. No plain view was possible, and there was no tell‑tale smell issuing from the inside of the van, as smoking during drug transaction was absolutely taboo. ‑These particular clients' knew their trade‑ While the five were seated discussing the affairs at hand, there came the stentorian rap at the driver's side where stood Monty Myers and Randy Hall, the fair‑haired and handsome All American High Point counterparts of Starsky and Hutch. All defense witnesses recorded the same words being spoken by Officers Myers and Hall, commonly dubbed "Monty's Marauders" in the local drug culture. "Open up, Tommy. We have reliable information that you've got a load of marijuana on board and we want to search your van. " No response from within. Finally, defendant Stalder, owner of the van, having had some experience with Myers before in a similar raid, responded with words to the effect of, "we are legally parked Monty, and you have no probable cause to search this vehicle." On a previous occasion this same Officer Myers had arrested defendants Stalder and Logan for drug possession, but the case was thrown to the fact that Officer Myers had predicated his out at the voir dire hearing, due search of the vehicle on that occasion on the claim that he detected the odor of marijuana exuding from the defendant's parked Porsche automobile. On that first "bust," however, Officer Myers was standing some twenty feet away from the Porsche when he claimed to have smell the marijuana, and it was a rainy night in February, and the windows again were closed. No burned marijuana cigarettes were found in the ensuing search.

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