Dean's Address

I say to you from the heart that you and 1, and others like us, should feel compelled to articulate and celebrate the seminal Honor and Integrity of our historic profession and ‑when confronted with attitudes and actions which besmirch our noble calling‑we should respond appropriately and reaffirm the admonition that "to stand silent when we should protest makes cowards of us all."

Admittedly, the Supreme Court of the United States has made our assignment much more difficult because of its series of opinions which have ‑ out of naivety and under Constitutional pretexts ‑ failed to take offense at certain "marketing" practices devised by a minority of our profession. Certainly, The Court has not with a clarion voice rearticulated that ours is an especially different kind of profession and not a mere trade and that the ethics of our profession are not the ethics of the marketplace.

Nonetheless, insofar as I am personally concerned, the composite Bar has tolerated the intolerable when it has not consistently held accountable creatures of the profession who have deviated from high standards of professional conduct and who have demeaned and compromised and soiled the image of an institution we revere. Of all the characteristics of a fine lawyer ‑ intellect, professional competence, experience, industry, credibility, judgment honor and integrity, etc. ‑two values cannot and must never be compromised or quantified: Honor and Integrity.

So, assuming for the purpose of this question that my comments have some merit, what do we do about this matter? For one, I think that we ought to revisit our old ethical and professional standards and compare and contrast them with the techniques and practices and values and perceptions of the present time. To the extent that the quality of our professional growth and contributions has improved, let's retain that enchancernent; to the extent that our value system has deteriorated and retrograded, let's take that into account and address our responsibility to do something about it. Specifically, what do I suggest, together, that we do?

1. To reread our professional literature, including the Constitution and Bylaws of this great organization, and to commit ourselves to their teachings.

2. To reread the Code of Trial Conduct of the College and to recommit ourselves to its teachings.

3. To senstitize our individual capacity for indignation with respect to members of our profession who deviate and depart from the substance and sense of the standards and values we believe in and by which we live.

4. Importantly, to serve as individual and composite exemplars to our brothers and sisters in the profession and demonstrate how a lawyer can and should act both in an individual and in a representative capacity. We should so conduct ourselves that our colleagues will perceive us to be followers of the highest order of decency and honor and gentlemanly and ladylike conduct so that our colleagues at large will be inspired to emulate that "Code" as a model for professional conduct.

5. To make a conscious effort to reach out and touch the incoming and younger members of the Bar. We should engage in dialogues with them and extend our support and resources to them ‑ and to typify for that generation and for generations to follow what lawyers ought to try to be. I argue that the focus of our dialogues with our young colleagues should emphasize accountability and responsibility as counterweights to the "rights" so many of us insist upon these days. We should listen again to the sage advice of courtly justice Stewart when he observed that just because someone has the right to do something doesn't necessarily mean that it's the right thing to do.

6. To take an objective and in‑depth inventory of how our profession has changed through the years ‑ for better, and for worse ‑ and to rededicate ourselves individually to the highest ideals of the profession and particularly to our craft not only for the benefit of our people at large, but also for the enrichment of a national treasure‑our proud and historic profession which we strive to serve as paladins.

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