Page 67 - ACTL Journal_Sum24

INTELLECTUAL VIRTUES
What might be a good intellectual virtue for a law student to develop, and for a lawyer to practice? Perhaps none is more im- portant than the virtue of open-mindedness, which is essential for both law students and lawyers. We have to be able to imagine different perspectives. We have to be able to represent different perspectives, make different sorts of arguments, and put ourselves into other people’s shoes. Open-mindedness is also a facilitating or enabling virtue that helps us to cultivate related values and principles such as empathy, humility, and self-awareness.
MORAL VIRTUES
What might be a relevant moral virtue for lawyers? Honesty is especially important. One might say, “Look, honesty already fig- ures prominently in the way we practice law.” In many ways, that is correct. Professional Responsibility courses embrace a number of rules that talk about honesty, such as 4.1, 7.1, 1.6, and various others. That is both true and good and it should continue. But we also need to help law students think, for the sake of our workplac- es, that honesty is not simply a box to check or a rule to follow but a characteristic of who they are.
CIVIC VIRTUES
Civic virtues and knowledge have come up in both in conversa- tions with some of you and in conversations on this stage over the past couple of days. Civility is essential for lawyers. Lawyers are disproportionately involved in public leadership and, accord- ing to many, there is a crisis of civility. Lawyers must, in their day-to-day work, embody civility. Though there may be a way for you to secure a short-term advantage or short-term win by acting uncivil, it is often not going to be the long-term advantage of you or your client.
What might be a good performance virtue for us to cultivate in our students? Resilience is certainly one of the most important. For law students and for lawyers, there are certainly plenty of opportunities to get practice with resilience. Setbacks certainly happen on occasion. We need to be preparing our students to be resilient lawyer leaders who can navigate the professional setbacks that will inevitably come.
INTEGRATIVE VIRTUE
The Jubilee Center also outlines what it calls the integrative virtue, the “uber” or master virtue. This is in many respects the preemi- nent virtue for lawyers: practical wisdom. Good judgment is ab- solutely essential when we are engaged in the practice of law. This provides us with the capacity to make difficult decisions when we face uncertain and incomplete information. This is in so many respects the essence of lawyering. We in the legal profession must be able to turn to these and other sorts of virtues.
There are strategies that we embrace in our work, developed through a partnership with the Oxford University Character Project.
Centering character is intrinsically valuable. I think it is a good thing if we can help students become people who are more honest, resilient, wise, and the like. This is a good thing in and of itself. But it also has practical use. These law students will be better lawyers. They will be better lawyers if they’re open-minded, civil, and wise.
Character also provides a stable anchor for identity formation. Character refers to a rela- tively stable disposition. Identity also refers to something with more stability. There are vari- ous approaches to professional identity forma- tion. Some are very skill oriented. Though skills are certainly important, they do not impact identity or character in quite the same way.
Character is already being taught in some ways, indirectly or implicitly. Students pay attention to what their professors do and say or what they don’t do or don’t say.
One concern is that this is paternalistic. This talk about character and character virtues is moralistic. To this I would say that we are not talking about capital “V” virtue, which might suggest that you have to belong to this sort of philosophical religious system in order to get it right. We are instead talking about various virtues and character traits that are going to be relevant for your lives, as well as for your work as lawyers. We must be attentive to this concern. There are certain risks if we are not alert to the possibility that we could exert un- due influence on our students. This does not mean that we should not work to instill char- acter and virtue.
Another potential objection is that law school has so many other important topics that must be covered. How is there room to add anything else to a three-year, already rigorous course of study? Why must study areas on character and virtue be added? There is a changing nature of legal education and legal practice. We do not know where the future is headed. Technology is disrupting legal education and legal practice in ways that we are only beginning to appreciate.
SUMMER 2024 JOURNAL 66