At the end of a long workday, I watched the last plaintiff come to the podium. On my right, her boy and girl wandered into the courtroom, hovering on the sidelines, looking out the window, listening, turning their backs to us, as if by making us invisible to them, they were making themselves invisible to us. I thought they wanted to hear her tell their story. They were restless, and so was I. The baby settled in her mother’s left arm, and its neck relaxed backward over her elbow, drifting to sleep. And her story, which had been closeted and contained for so long, began to unfold.
In 2018, an Arizona lawyer with an incurable disease shared his biggest regret: He hadn’t listened well enough. This might be a common misgiving among lawyers, whose verbal skills are often more highly developed than their listening abilities.
Your client emails before you finish your first coffee. Attached is a chatbot’s analysis of the law and a proposed strategy for the case. By midmorning, you have used AI yourself—comparing documents, cutting through pages of judicial prose, producing a sharper draft in minutes. You are faster than you were last year, and your work product looks better. But something else has changed. The clock on your profession has started running faster.
I graduated from the University of Missouri School of Law 50 years ago in May 1976, and I have been a law professor for 40-plus years. During my years as a law student, as an attorney and as a law professor, I have come to regard several attorneys among those I consider my heroes.
On my 81st birthday, I found myself back in the courtroom, cross-examining a defendant and his ballistics experts in a murder trial—an unexpected chapter after winding down my practice as a senior litigation partner at Thompson Coburn. The experience underscored the reality facing many prosecutors today: While the nature of violent crime and defenses has changed, the need for hands-on training from experienced prosecutors has not.
On my first day of practice, I bought a leather armchair that I fully intended to use forever. Retirement was something that happened to senior partners, disgruntled lawyers or cranky old judges. Years later, I realized Shakespeare had already mapped it out.
I spend my days thinking about talent. Not in the abstract and not as a talking point but in the very real sense of who gets hired, who advances, who quietly exits and why. Over the years, I have watched law firms wrestle with the same questions again and again: how to identify excellence, how to remain competitive, and how to adapt to a workforce that looks and thinks differently from what it was even a decade ago.
From as early on as I can remember, my mother told my three sisters and me that we could be anything we wanted—except lawyers. She should have known better.
This year’s Major League Baseball opener is an upcoming Wednesday night game between the New York Yankees and the Giants in San Francisco. That game marks 150 years since the first official opening day, when the Boston Red Stockings defeated the Philadelphia Athletics on April 22, 1876. A great deal of major league history followed, both on and off the field.
The ABA Journal wants to host and facilitate conversations among lawyers about their profession. We are now accepting thoughtful, non-promotional articles and commentary by unpaid contributors.
