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00:00:01
2.20_Patricia Lee Refo, ABA President on The Rule of Law
14 Plays4 years ago
American Bar Association President, Patricia Lee Refo, sits down with Co-Dean Kim Mutcherson to discuss this year's Law Day theme "Advancing the Rule of Law Now".
Click here to learn more about Law Day 2021!
The Power of Attorney is produced by Rutgers Law School. With two locations minutes from Philadelphia and New York City, Rutgers Law offers the prestige and reputation of a large, nationally-known university combined with a personal, small campus experience. Learn more by visiting law.rutgers.edu.
Series Producer and Editor: Kate Bianco
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Introduction
00:00:07
Speaker
Hi, my name is Kim Mettreson, Coding of Rutgers Law School in Camden, and this is the Power of Attorney. In what we hope will become an annual event, I have the absolute pleasure this year of interviewing President Patricia Lee Rifo, who is the current president of the American Bar Association. I am really grateful to have you with us today, Trish, and really looking forward to our conversation. As am I, I'm delighted to be with you, Kim. Thank you.
00:00:36
Speaker
Absolutely.
Origin Story and Career Path
00:00:37
Speaker
So what I like to do on these podcasts is ask people for their origin story, right? I'm always curious about given all the different things that you could have done with your life, why law? What made you decide to become a lawyer? So I grew up in a Navy family. Um, as far as the, I can see my father, both my brothers, my grandfather, everybody in my immediate family was a Navy pilot. And when I went off to college,
00:01:05
Speaker
It wasn't an option for me to follow in the footsteps and go to the Naval Academy and become a pilot. I could have gone to the Naval Academy maybe because I would have been in the first class of women, but women couldn't fly jets on aircraft carriers in those days. So I had to come up with a plan B and my plan B originally was journalism. And so I went off to the University of Michigan thinking journalism was what I wanted.
00:01:30
Speaker
And there's actually Kim, an interesting Rutgers connection to this story, because as I was studying some political science classes, I was introduced to a wonderful professor who taught undergraduate law related classes. His name is Milton human and he's now at Rutgers at the political science department. And he opened up for me as good teachers do a whole world.
00:01:58
Speaker
that I had never considered as a career path. And by the time he was finished opening that world to me, I was off to law school. Great. And so what was it exactly that he pitched to you about law school? Why did he make it seem like that was a path that could work for you?
Inspiration and Role Models
00:02:19
Speaker
Well, what he taught me was the power of the rule of law, the power of the common law system,
00:02:29
Speaker
the really grace and majesty of the American legal system at its finest. We don't every day hit that mark, but we aspire to it, don't we, every day. And it became clear to me that this was an opportunity to make a difference in a larger way and to be part of something
00:02:55
Speaker
that is so important and foundational to our country and to our democracy. Absolutely. Did you have any lawyers in your family? I had one uncle who was a lawyer who interestingly enough in Virginia, in Richmond of all places, had as his law partner when I was a kid, the first woman graduate of, I want to say it was Old Dominion University Law School in those days.
00:03:21
Speaker
But anyway, she was a woman lawyer when I was like six and seven growing up. So I always had in the back of my head, this wonderful image of Miss Tompkins as a woman lawyer. We called her Miss T and Miss T was just a piece of work. And if I had any of Miss T in me, then I'm a very fortunate girl.
Law School Experience
00:03:51
Speaker
So you went to Michigan for undergrad and then Michigan for law school as well. And I always also love to hear people talk a little bit about their experience in law school. You know, we all sort of get told to be really sort of afraid.
00:04:07
Speaker
before that first year of law school. And that first year of law school is often very challenging because as I say to students, we are teaching you a new language and we are teaching you a new way to think. And that can be a really tough transition for folks. So what was your law school experience like? It was transformative and a little scary all at the same time. To your point, yes, you are learning completely from scratch.
00:04:35
Speaker
a new vocabulary, a new system, a new everything. And there is both sort of wonder and a little bit of fear in all of that. But my law school experience as a whole was a bonding experience, certainly with my law school class. When we get back together, everyone steps right back to where they were in terms of the relationships. It doesn't matter that you haven't seen somebody since the last reunion five years ago.
00:05:05
Speaker
you pick up as if you just walked out of class five minutes ago and are catching up on the day, right? So it was a challenging and really wonderful experience, I will say, however, that when I was invited back not long ago to speak to the faculty at my law school, which was a huge privilege, it was probably the most single terrifying thing I've ever done.
00:05:33
Speaker
to walk in front of, some of whom were actually my professors, right? And I'm the one in the front of the room, are you kidding me? But I got through it, so there.
00:05:46
Speaker
Perfect, perfect. Yeah, there's always this time period after students graduate where they refuse to call me by my first name. And I'd have to keep telling them, you know, you're a lawyer now, you've graduated, we can actually be adults together. So yeah, it's definitely definitely an intimidating experience to be back in front of your your law school professors. It was just I hold them still in such high regard. And the when you are introduced to someone, as you say,
00:06:15
Speaker
as sort of the youngster in the relationship. It is sometimes the vestiges of that stick with you, right? Absolutely.
Mentorship and Career Development
00:06:27
Speaker
So after you graduated from law school, I mean, you've obviously been practicing law for quite some time now. You have been incredibly successful as a lawyer over the years. And I want to talk to you about your career. And in particular, I'm always interested in talking to women lawyers about their experience in the field. You know, we have had law school classes that are basically 50% women for many, many years now.
00:06:55
Speaker
And yet when you get out there into the world, particularly into the big firm world, we see lots of women who end up leaving the law, who may be on partner track and then end up leaving and don't end up building that long career in the law. So one of the questions that I love to ask successful women is, who were the people who were your mentors and your champions that helped you have the career that you've been able to have?
00:07:23
Speaker
I've been incredibly privileged to practice at two law firms in my career. I started at Jenner and Block in Chicago. And then when I moved to Phoenix, because I got married to a Phoenix lawyer, whom I met, by the way, at the American Bar Association, but that's another story. I've been at Snell and Wilmer in Phoenix ever since. And at both of those firms, there have been men and women
00:07:47
Speaker
who have been my mentors and my allies. I was extremely fortunate as a young lawyer. I mean, I graduated in 1983. There weren't very many women who were at the top of the food chain in law firms in those days. There still aren't enough, but there were very few back then. But one took me under her wing at Jenner Block, Joan Hall, who at the time was already on the executive committee.
00:08:16
Speaker
She had chaired the litigation section of the American bar, which was and is the largest section of the ABA. I mean, she was and is an amazing lawyer and example. And she has still mentors me, right? I mean, she reached out to me last week because she read something that I had gotten published in a newspaper and she read it and reached out and said, Yahoo. So having
00:08:43
Speaker
examples of someone who actually kind of looked like me, right? I mean, we all understand that was deeply important, but I had plenty, plenty of men and still do who mentor me, who have helped me in, in this role I'm in right now, for example, the former presidents of the American Bar Association, men and women have been there for me at every step.
00:09:09
Speaker
to make sure that they're supporting the work I'm doing, that when I need help or need advice, that they are there to give it to me. So I'm very, very blessed to have so many folks over the years who have invested in me. And I'm sure like you, Kim, I worked very hard to try and pay that forward by doing the same. And whenever somebody does something to mentor me, I think to myself, okay, now you have
00:09:37
Speaker
a responsibility today or tomorrow or this week to do that as well for someone else. Absolutely, absolutely.
00:09:46
Speaker
I think one of the challenges that often, I would say young lawyers in general, but since we're talking about women lawyers, I'll focus on that, is figuring out how are you supposed to identify somebody who's going to be your mentor? Do you just walk up to someone and say, hey, I need you to be my mentor? What advice do you have for young women who are entering the profession now in terms of thinking about how do you
00:10:12
Speaker
sort of build your team, right? The people who are going to help you go through your career and be successful, hopefully, in that career. I've always found that the most important relationships are the ones that form naturally. That's not to say we shouldn't have formal assigned mentors in law firms and in other sorts of practice settings, because that's very important. But in addition,
00:10:40
Speaker
We need to find the mentors that work for us because we've built that relationship. It's not true that you learn from everybody necessarily. That's just true in human dynamics, that some persons are going to click in a different way with you. And so finding somebody with whom you have a natural working relationship and building on that has in my experience been the most useful mentoring
00:11:08
Speaker
that I've ever had, finding someone who is sometimes quite different from you, right? You know, I have learned over the years, especially as a litigator, how important it is to work with lots of different people who, for example, approach a cross examination in completely different ways, because that's how you get to watch and learn what works best for you.
00:11:37
Speaker
What's authentic for you? And I think especially in litigation, but that's only because that's what I know. That's deeply important.
00:11:44
Speaker
How did you decide what kind of law you wanted to practice? I mean, one of the things that you see a lot if you are a law school professor is students who come into law school and have these really strong ideas of what they want to do. They want to do health law. They want to do international law. They want to do financial law. And often they actually have no idea what that looks like.
00:12:10
Speaker
in practice, right? So I wonder how you decided what kind of law that you wanted to practice and then, you know, what made you decide to stick with it? I think that's a great question. And one of the things that I tell law students when I get the opportunity to speak to them is that I think the sort of coming out of law school decision is really a
00:12:34
Speaker
Am I in the courtroom or am I not in the courtroom kind of a decision? Because that's really something that I believe most law students have enough experience with themselves and with the profession to be able to decide. Much past that, I would reserve judgment. Of course, there are exceptions, right? There's someone with a deep science background.
00:12:58
Speaker
who went to law school knowing that he or she wanted to go into patent work, fine, there are exceptions. But in general, I did not so much decide where I wanted to start my practice as over time had experience in different areas and decided what I liked the most. And if you had said to me, for example, when I was in law school,
00:13:27
Speaker
that one of the things that I would spend a significant chunk of my career working on was class action defense work. I would have said, no, I'm not going to do that. Well, but it turns out not only is it interesting, I was good at it, right? And so I've done a bunch of that over time. I've certainly done other things as well, but my personal experience has been more developing
00:13:54
Speaker
be the sort of the procedural skills. How do you prepare a case for trial? How do you try a case if you need to? How do you get a case settled if you need to do that? And then have applied those skills to a number of complex commercial litigation
00:14:13
Speaker
sort of areas over time. I would love to ask you a little bit of a technical question and you can tell me if you don't want to go down this road. But I am not a civil procedure professor. I'm a torts professor. But one of the things that I think has been really interesting is the proliferation of class action lawsuits over the last several decades. And I just think about just reading your email and something will pop up and say, hey, you're a part of this class or you're a part of that class.
00:14:42
Speaker
something that just sort of comes out of nowhere. And I know that in addition to being a really fantastic lawyer, you're also somebody who has had opportunities to think about how we reform our rules of evidence and how we sort of think about our judicial system.
ABA Involvement and Role
00:14:58
Speaker
And I wonder really about, as somebody who's been doing this work, what do you sort of see as the future
00:15:07
Speaker
of class actions. I mean, on one hand, I think a lot of people look at them and say, well, it's really important to be able to bring together, you know, huge groups of people and other people will look at them and say, we're out of control here, right? We need to sort of figure out a better way for our system to move forward. I'm curious if you have, I'm sure you have some thoughts about it. Speaking only for myself and not on behalf of the American Bar Association, you just articulated exactly the
00:15:34
Speaker
the challenge and the tension between on the one hand providing a mechanism for someone who suffered a very small injury, but that injury was repeated against a large number of people, right? That's sort of on the one side. And on the other side is the potential for abuse of a system that because it allows the aggregation of tiny claims,
00:16:01
Speaker
can make a small thing into a very giant thing too quickly. So the law has worked over the years and continues to struggle with how best to articulate and protect both sides in that equation. And you know, like so many things in the law, Kim, there isn't a perfect answer. It's all about attempting, endeavoring, trying to do the very best we can
00:16:30
Speaker
in a justice system that is created and run by human beings. And any institution that is created and run by human beings is going to be imperfect. And that's why we search constantly for how to do better. And class actions is but one example of the many ways that our justice system continues to try
00:16:58
Speaker
to strive to be better, to be more just, to deliver more justice and to get us toward that more perfect union, right? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
00:17:10
Speaker
So I want to segue here. I mean, on one hand, I want to hear a little bit about the decision you made to get deeply involved in the ABA. I mean, even before you were the ABA president, you were doing a lot of work with the ABA. So I do want to talk about that a little bit. And then I want to go back to what we were just talking about in terms of our justice system.
00:17:28
Speaker
because, you know, 2020 gave us opportunities to think about a lot of different things.
Rule of Law and Current Events
00:17:34
Speaker
Certainly one of those things is thinking about how our, particularly how our criminal justice system works, but also how our democracy works in general. So let's do the easy part first, which is
00:17:45
Speaker
getting involved with the ABA. One of the things I think that law students often don't think about is what other ways can I or should I be involved with the profession besides the work that I do on a daily basis that pays my bills? So what was the thought process for you that said, I want to be involved with the ABA, I want to spend time there, I want to do the work that is
00:18:12
Speaker
you know, required in order for the ABA to really be successful in what it's meant to do, right? Which is sort of be this representative organization for the thousands and thousands of lawyers in the US. So why allow the ABA to start taking up your time? So you use kind of the key word in your question there, which is profession. And it's because becoming a lawyer isn't getting a job.
00:18:40
Speaker
Becoming a lawyer is becoming part of a learned profession. We have this wonderful mystical language about being called to the bar, about passing the bar, meaning being allowed in a courtroom to pass the barrier between those who are not part of the learned profession and those who are.
00:19:06
Speaker
deeply important to understand that professions require, among many other things, active participation to engage in self-governance. That is an enormous privilege that we as a learned profession have been given. We regulate ourselves. We decide for ourselves who can be admitted to our profession. And when I say ourselves, I'm including obviously our courts,
00:19:35
Speaker
who are run by people who went to law school too. So the American Bar Association, the organized bar in every state, is part of that self-governance. It was and is my belief that every lawyer has a responsibility, frankly, to be part of that process. Some of us do it actively.
00:19:59
Speaker
Others of us do it with our financial support through our membership dues, but we are, by supporting the organized bar, we are supporting and carrying forward the self-governance of our profession. The American Bar Association in particular has two core functions of accrediting the law schools in the United States, which is obviously hugely important.
00:20:26
Speaker
and promulgating the model rules of professional conduct for our profession. That doesn't mean that states don't alter and modify those model rules. They, of course, do. But those two core functions are deeply important to the work of the American Bar Association. And that's before you get to all of the stuff we do around
00:20:49
Speaker
the rule of law around continuing legal education, et cetera. But we are the voice of the national legal profession. And as the voice of the national legal profession, the ABA is often asked to step in, in really big ways. So for instance, you know, the ABA is often asked to weigh in on new judges who are being appointed.
00:21:11
Speaker
or the ABA is asked to weigh in when there are big issues in the world surrounding lawyers. And in the last year or so, we've had a lot of public conversation about lawyers for a range of reasons. And so I want to talk a little bit about Law Day this year, where the theme is advancing the rule of law,
00:21:34
Speaker
now. And the last presidential election gave us lots of opportunities to think about our democracy, to think about voting rights, to think about what elections should look like, to think about what responsibilities lawyers have as they are working with
00:21:53
Speaker
campaigns or even the many, many lawyers who sit in Congress, what kinds of responsibilities they have as well to think about and to advance the rule of law. So when we look back on the year that we've had, and in particular, I think when we look back on
00:22:10
Speaker
the January 6th. People are using different words for it. I will go ahead and use insurrection, although I know that others would not use that word. I think that was a really frightening moment for a lot of us to watch that happen and to also, again, as I say, to watch some of the lawyers in Congress act in ways that didn't quite seem in keeping with what we would expect from folks in our profession.
00:22:34
Speaker
So given that theme for Law Day this year, I'd really appreciate having a little bit of a back and forth with you about what you see as our responsibility as lawyers to uphold the rule of law. And then when you see something like what happened on January 6th, what are the lessons that we should draw from that as a profession about our responsibilities?
00:23:00
Speaker
That's a really big question, isn't it? So let's start with the rule of law in the context of what happened on January 6th because I had a really challenging opportunity, Kim, a week after January 6th to speak about the rule of law to a group of international bar leaders. It had been long previously scheduled. Well, what in the world do you say
00:23:30
Speaker
about America and the rule of law a week after January 6, when you're talking to an international audience, who by the way, was possibly even more aghast at what happened than we were. Because we are still an absolute beacon to the world of a justice system and a democracy that works. So the way I put it in context was
00:23:58
Speaker
after sort of expressing and speaking to the collective horror that we all felt on that day was to talk about it in the context of the triumph of the rule of law. Because at the end of the day, we have rules about elections and they need to be followed. If they're not followed, we have a system of
00:24:26
Speaker
how you can bring a dispute to an open court that is independent of the executive branch who holds an open proceeding to fully hear whatever the complaint is that's been brought. And we did all of that all the way up to our highest court. Then the electoral college met as it is supposed to do. It voted the way it's supposed to vote.
00:24:56
Speaker
And at the end of the day on January 6th, the important part to me, or an important part is that we ended it with our Congress back in session, doing what they're supposed to do under the law, which was to certify the results of a fairly conducted election. And they did that. So the rule of law triumphed is at the end of the day, the truth. It wasn't a pretty path. I certainly agree with that.
00:25:25
Speaker
But at the end of the day, the system worked the way it was supposed to. And we had a peaceful transition of power on January 20th. In retrospect, each of us individually has a responsibility to think about what we as lawyers should be doing when we're engaging in public debate in the public square. That is different from the disciplinary rules and rule 11 and the stuff
00:25:53
Speaker
that is around what do you have to do, right? Because I don't think what you have to do else you'll get yourself in trouble with the licensing authorities ought to be the standard by which we govern ourselves. We should be always aspiring higher than that. Let me put it this way. I don't wake up in the morning and say, I'm gonna set about my day to not violate any criminal statute.
00:26:23
Speaker
I don't think about it that way. My bar for my conduct is not that low. I would like for lawyers to sort of approach the disciplinary roles in the same way. They are a floor. They are certainly not the top of where we should aspire. And it is my judgment that lawyers ought not in the public square make a statement
00:26:53
Speaker
about a matter of public importance that they know is factually incorrect. Period. I don't think it needs to be a disciplinary issue. I think it's simply what we are called to as officers of the court. We don't knowingly make false statements. Period. Right. Absolutely. One of the things that has come out of all of the activity in January
Civics Education and Public Discourse
00:27:19
Speaker
is a call for better civics education, right? That part of the issue or maybe a small part, but at least part of the issue was that too many people don't understand our system.
00:27:36
Speaker
and they don't understand the way that things function. And so it's easy to sort of confuse people when they don't have that basic information. Is that one of the lessons that you draw from that experience? And if so, do you also see a role for lawyers to play in helping people better understand the way that our various systems work? Yeah, there's no question, Kim, that that is a crying need still in our country.
00:28:06
Speaker
I had the privilege to, because I live in Arizona, to get to know and to work with some Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who, when she left the bench, formed a focus on civics education, among other things, precisely because she saw and understood the critical connection between civics education on the one hand and upholding the rule of law and our democracy on the other.
00:28:35
Speaker
absolutely intertwined, an educated electorate who understands what the role of each of our branches of government is, is critical to advancing the mission of any one of them. So yes, lawyers have an important role to play, not just in educating people about the courts and the third branch of government, but it also in helping people to understand
00:29:01
Speaker
how the three branches of government interrelate with one another. An example is I pull my hair out every time I read a newspaper article about a court decision where in the very first sentence they articulate which president nominated that federal judge to go on the bench. That is, should be meaningless and often is to the result, not always,
00:29:30
Speaker
It is not an appropriate place to start with understanding a judicial opinion any more than it is appropriate to start with. What was the result? Do I like the result? And then I will work my way backwards to decide whether or not the law was applied correctly. It's not the way the law works. The law works to apply a set of principles to a set of facts.
00:29:58
Speaker
not to derive a particular result in a particular case. Yeah. So the January 6th event came on the tail end of a year that none of us will forget.
ABA's Pandemic Response and Initiatives
00:30:14
Speaker
2020 asked an enormous amount of all of us. The fact that we are doing this interview and I am sitting in my house and you are sitting in your house is a reflection of what that year was like.
00:30:27
Speaker
both the pandemic and the really significant racial reckoning that came out of 2020 had an impact on the law and the lawyers and our system. So I want to talk about the pandemic first and then I want to talk about the issues of race that continue to permeate.
00:30:48
Speaker
our country. One of the things that the pandemic required of us was to shut down a bunch of courthouses so that people couldn't show up for jury duty and trials and settlement conferences. And that was a really tough transition for a lot of people and for a lot of courts.
00:31:12
Speaker
So one of the things that I would love to talk about with you is some of the work that the ABA is doing to think about how to learn some lessons, frankly, for our judicial system from the pandemic and from the ways that we've used technology in the pandemic that potentially could actually help us create more access to justice going forward.
00:31:36
Speaker
You keep asking these really small questions, Kim. That's obviously a huge question. And so here's how we approached it at the ABA. Judy Perry Martinez, whom you referenced when we began this conversation, my predecessor and I, last spring immediately as the pandemic settled in on all of us, formed what we called at the ABA the Practice Forward Task Force.
00:32:06
Speaker
And the idea behind Practice Forward was to gather together all of the resources at the American Bar Association and all the different constituent parts of our very complex organization to put in one place the resources that lawyers need to figure out how to practice in this moment that we're still, many of us still in.
00:32:30
Speaker
It ranges from things about what are the ethical issues that you have to think about perhaps a little differently when you are working from home, ranging from cybersecurity issues to, you know, all sorts of other things, including how do you mentor and raise up young lawyers in this environment in which everybody's, you know, or many anyway, are still working from home almost a hundred percent of the time. There are a whole host of those issues.
00:33:00
Speaker
And practice forward is trying to assemble and stay on top of the tools that lawyers need and courts need to move forward. We are going to be facing an incredible backlog of both civil and criminal cases for a while. We just will be because you can't kind of put things on partial hold and then not expect a whole host of issues when things start up again.
00:33:29
Speaker
So we're all gonna have to be patient. We're all gonna have to find other alternatives for resolving our disputes. We're gonna have to be open to things like modified jury trials. I'm not saying anyone should be compelled to take one, but I'm saying that there are opportunities for us to think about new ways to resolve disputes. People are now doing, as you know, remote jury trials, whether they work or they don't work,
00:33:59
Speaker
remains to be seen, but there are certainly some places where folks are experiencing great success. What we have to be careful of in this moment is making sure that neither our justice system nor the lawyers involved in the justice system are unable to do their jobs by virtue of things that are insidious
00:34:28
Speaker
discrimination in our process and our system. For example, the Practice Forward group did a survey of statistically significant number of ABA members and women reported lots more challenges than men did. Lawyers of color reported lots more challenges than white lawyers did. We have to be
00:34:56
Speaker
incredibly vigilant at this moment to make sure that we don't lose any of the progress that has been made in both of those regards. And in fact, that we actually continue to advance the causes of women and lawyers of color in our profession, not just sort of hold our own. We speak about it in terms of not losing ground. This is a time
00:35:23
Speaker
for all the other reasons you just referenced, where we need to be moving those causes forward, where we need to be sensitizing all of the justice system stakeholders to the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion in all respects of our justice system. And we have a great deal more work to do in that space, obviously.
00:35:47
Speaker
Definitely, definitely. And I'm so appreciative that you made that point. I mean, there have been a lot of conversations, obviously, you know, MySpace is higher education, but sort of watching people, particularly women, as you say, who even in 2021, bear the brunt of caregiving and housework and all of that good stuff, you know, trying to juggle
00:36:11
Speaker
all of those pieces of life in a world where lots of us who have school age kids suddenly became homeschoolers. And so trying to run a full-time job, trying to run a full-time school, trying to do all of this different work has been a really great moment, I think, for us to realize
00:36:29
Speaker
even more acutely how important it is to create opportunities for flexibility, to respect that people have both personal lives and professional lives, and to figure out how we can craft a profession that actually makes it possible, as you say, for people to be successful, whether there's a pandemic going on or not. So I hope that there are some lessons that we draw from that as well.
00:36:55
Speaker
The other piece of the puzzle in 2020, as you suggested, was about our, particularly our criminal justice system and policing in this country and the many ways in which policing has not been a race neutral proposition, unfortunately.
00:37:16
Speaker
And I know that the ABA has long done work on race and there's been a commission on, you know, racial and ethnic diversity in the profession. I know also that this year or last year the ABA started the Legal Education Police Practices Consortium. And so there's this really interesting and I think important work that's
00:37:36
Speaker
that's emanating from the ABA. So I want to give you an opportunity to talk about some of that work and frankly, what are your hopes about what the ABA can do here? Because again, it is this incredibly important
00:37:51
Speaker
organization that all of us really have a relationship to as lawyers in the US. So the leadership of the ABA here is really critical. So whether you want to talk about the work that's going on with the police practices consortium or some of the other work from the ABA, I think that would be great for people to hear. I want to talk about all of it. So the first thing I will say is that the American Bar Association only has four goals. And one of them
00:38:21
Speaker
is to eliminate bias and to enhance diversity in our profession and in our justice system. And I want to just pause for a second on the word eliminate. How important, how big is that goal, right? We're not about reducing bias. We're not about seeing if we can move the needle a little bit on bias. We, on paper, in writing, set our goal
00:38:51
Speaker
to eliminate bias. That is going to be a challenge that will outlive you and me, I fear, and go on for a very long time. One of the things that you mentioned is the Police Practices Consortium. And I'd love to talk for a second a little bit about that. This is something that we launched with the deans of more than 50 ABA accredited law schools around the country.
00:39:20
Speaker
And the idea is to come together through the American Bar Association to work on policing practices, modernizing them, bringing them into the 21st century, learning from all of the challenges in recent years that we have faced as a nation. And at the same time, allowing each law school to find a way to implement these concepts
00:39:50
Speaker
in a fashion that works for them. So for example, a law school in one of our major urban centers may have a very different approach that it wants to take to thinking about, talking about and teaching about these issues than a law school in a smaller community in perhaps a more rural state. I mean, each law school has
00:40:17
Speaker
the freedom and the challenge to figure out what works in their community, how to engage the stakeholders in their community, as well as their stakeholders at their law school to think about and work on and address these issues. So it's a very exciting program that will continue to roll out in the coming months in all of these law schools. And of course, we'll roll out differently once we begin to be able to be in person again.
00:40:46
Speaker
in our teaching settings and in our law schools. But the work around racial justice and racial equity in our country is, shall we say, multifaceted and something that each one of us has to work on as lawyers and frankly, just as human beings, as citizens of our country. We have, in addition to all of the challenges that our
00:41:15
Speaker
black community faces, we also now have repeated atrocious and reprehensible violence against Asian Americans as a consequence of the pandemic, for example. There's just no excuse for that. It's un-American, and it's certainly something that lawyers as a group must stand up to
00:41:42
Speaker
and call out. So we do that as well. Yeah. So obviously as Dean, I have lots of occasions to give sort of pep talk speeches and introductions and welcomes.
Diversity and Inclusion Efforts
00:41:56
Speaker
And one of the things that I always say when I'm giving talks like that is that law is a righteous profession.
00:42:03
Speaker
Right? That we want people in this profession who obviously are going to be doing a range of work, but the hope is that everybody comes to this profession with a sense of the importance of justice and the importance of the rule of law and the importance of equity. So I think it's incredibly meaningful that the ABA is doing the work that it is doing on these issues.
00:42:28
Speaker
I want to also give you a chance to talk about the work that the ABA is doing in terms of diversifying the profession because it's incredibly unfortunate when we look at the numbers and we see how few particularly
00:42:43
Speaker
black and brown folks there are in our profession, especially when you get to the higher tiers, but just sort of in general. And we were also sort of talking about women in the profession earlier in our conversation. And I know that that is something that the ABA has also spent a lot of time thinking about. Are there any particular projects in terms of the diversifying the profession work that you want to make sure people know about?
00:43:08
Speaker
So we have an entire commission on racial and ethnic diversity in the profession, which you referenced, which is devoted explicitly to that issue. And we do, for example, a model diversity survey every year, which allows law firms to respond to a set of model questions that are asked of law firms around the country.
00:43:31
Speaker
and then that information can be made available by the law firm to include in information it provides to prospective clients because prospective clients often want to compare law firm A with law firm B, right? On how they are doing on racial and ethnic diversity issues and gender issues. So by having a model survey,
00:43:57
Speaker
We even the playing field to make sure that when law firms are responding, they are responding based off of the same set of questions and the same set of information. So that is one thing that the ABA does in this regard. We also do important work in the pipeline, which is a long pipeline, right? We do work to assist students to get into law school in the first place.
00:44:26
Speaker
We provide legal opportunity scholarships to diverse law students who need that financial help in order to be able to get through law school. We have important clerkship and other leadership development opportunity programs for diverse law students to assist them in having access to and getting the experiences that other students get to
00:44:55
Speaker
give them a step up when they get into their legal careers and out of law school. All of those are important initiatives to level the playing field. I have come to learn the difference between equality and equity. In the example that I always use, I'm a short girl, I'm like five foot two. If the job is seeing over an eight foot wall,
00:45:25
Speaker
and I'm standing next to LeBron James and you give us the same size box to stand on, I'm still not gonna be able to see over the wall, okay? That's equality. Equity is giving me a bigger box in the first place because I'm not the same. It's looking at me individually as a person and assessing what that person needs
00:45:54
Speaker
in order to be able to be equal to the person next to her. Understanding that is, I think, a powerful first step for all of us to really get in it about what we're trying to do here. Yeah, yeah. That is so perfect. And I hope that there are going to be some people who listen to this podcast who hear that, and it's a good way for them to shift their mindset, because I think that's really critical.
00:46:23
Speaker
So I wanna wrap up by talking a little bit about, well, we're sitting in the midst of recruiting season for law schools, and we've had an uptick in applications this year across the board for law schools, so that's really interesting.
Encouragement for Future Lawyers and Conclusion
00:46:38
Speaker
It feels like this is a good opportunity or that I can give you a good opportunity here to talk to those folks who right now are deciding about going to law school. What would be your pitch to them, right? I mean, what is it about
00:46:52
Speaker
the law and being a lawyer and what is it about this profession that you think people should know? And what should people who are now thinking about going to law school, you know, what should they be thinking about in terms of what it takes to be a lawyer, what it takes to be a successful lawyer in the world in which we're living right now? So if you're thinking about becoming a lawyer, there are two
00:47:22
Speaker
pieces I think you need to hang on to at the same time. The first piece is about stepping into a tradition. There is enormous value in the traditions of the law, in the majesty of the law, in accepting and incorporating into who you are as a lawyer, the fact that you stand in the shoes of those who have come before you in this country
00:47:52
Speaker
for centuries in making the law work for our nation and for its citizens. The other piece is to understand the power that you have as a lawyer to improve on those traditions, to make them better, that that too is your responsibility. You can honor the traditions and move them forward at the same time.
00:48:22
Speaker
And I believe that is the highest calling of lawyers is to do both. Perfect. You and I could exchange talking points because that is something that I say a lot as well. And our profession is incredibly powerful and incredibly important. And I'm always proud of the folks who decided to join us here as lawyers.
00:48:45
Speaker
So that's the end of our conversation today, and I think that was a really wonderful place to end. I so appreciate the time that you gave us today, and I'm really excited to see all of us who were in charge of anything during 2020 definitely got a trial by fire. So I'm hoping that the end part of your term is maybe a little less
00:49:09
Speaker
tumultuous than how it started. But it's been really, really wonderful talking to you and getting to hear from you. And thank you so, so much for your time today. Great to be with you, Kim. Thank you so much. And stay healthy, and I wish you well. Thank you. Same to you. Take care.
00:49:28
Speaker
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