Heroes Aren't Hard to Find in Lecture Series
by
Patrick K. Hetrick

To stimulate her young pupils, a first-grade teacher in Harnett County, North Carolina, arranged to take her class on an educational tour of a local farm. But one perceptive small boy saw right through her scheme. "Don't look, don't look!" he warned his buddy as they exited the school bus into the midst of barns, farm animals, pasture, and fields of crops. "If we look we'll have to tell about it tomorrow!"

There is an element of "Don't look, don't look" in the day-to-day study of law. First-year law students become so immersed in the daily fare of contracts, torts, property law, criminal law, and civil procedure and the inescapable concern and preparation for final examinations that their very existence becomes one of dealing with the trees and not the forest of the legal profession.

It is true that a course in ethics in one form or another is taught at all law schools, and that is good. But "ethics" and even the broader realm of "professional responsibility" tend to be specific "do's and don'ts" courses, with an emphasis on the don'ts. There needs to be some time in the three years of legal education when law students can sit back in class, relax, not be required to recite, and not be held responsible for regurgitating information when final exam time comes. There needs to be a "time out" from the rat race of law study when law students can be exposed to and think about the big picture of the legal profession.

The big picture is inextricably intertwined with the concept of professionalism. What does it mean in positive terms to be a member of a learned profession like the legal profession? Above and beyond necessary educational expeditions into the rules that all law students need to be aware of in the ethics course, what can be done to cause students to climb to a high plateau and view all there is to see in the panorama we call the legal profession?

Campbell's answer is a new requirement that all students participate in a lecture series in which leaders in the legal profession share their thoughts on what it means to be a "lawyer" in the complete sense of that word. And heroes aren't hard to find. During seven lectures scheduled in each semester of the first-year curriculum, selected "heroes" and "leaders" of the legal profession are invited to Campbell to have lunch with students, present a lecture, and then answer questions from the students.

Recent guest lecturers include: Judge Elizabeth McCrodden of the North Carolina Court of Appeals, who used the Sacco-Vanzetti case to explore the historic role of courts and the legal profession in confronting racial and other forms of discrimination; Susan Olive, president of the North Carolina Association of Women Attorneys, who spoke about professionalism and civility in the practice of law, the status of women in the legal profession, the counseling aspect of being a lawyer, and the responsibility of lawyers to set good examples in public and in private; Allan Head, executive director of the North Carolina Bar Association, who spoke on "leadership" and the responsibilities and attributes of an effective leader; and Julius L. Chambers, distinguished civil rights attorney and chancellor of North Carolina Central University.

The lecture series is required of all first-year law students. Borrowing from the ABA's "Legal Education and Professional Development - An Educational Continuum" (the MacCrate Report), the series addresses and explores three values: promoting justice, fairness, and morality in one's daily practice; contributing to the profession's fulfillment of its responsibility to ensure that adequate legal services are provided to those who cannot afford to pay for them; and contributing to the profession's fulfillment of its responsibility to enhance the capacity of law and legal institutions to do justice.

Values addressed in the lecture series also reflect Campbell's Christian mission and tradition. The effect of Judeo-Christian values on the manner in which lawyers conduct themselves, an analysis of the legal profession from the perspective of stewardship, and the concept of spiritual fulfillment as a practicing lawyer are examples of values that can be explored.

Because the students' obligation to attend each lecture is treated as a professional responsibility, no academic credit is given. In addition, each lecture is treated as a court appearance, and students are required to dress appropriately.