Legal Commentary

In an earlier post on the value of experienced lawyers as full time legal academics, I made the argument that the academy undervalues such experience - a position that undoubtedly resonates with me because the category includes people like me.



But, while I argue that substantial experience has value that our colleagues often do not recognize, I also wanted to respond to the implicit criticism that what law profs do has little to do with what lawyers do. I have more or less irrevocably crossed the great divide, but I still practice a little law and being an academic has made me a better lawyer.



The reason, I think, is that I was forced to look at the law with eyes that are both fresh (those of a scholar) and old (those of the student that I once was). Doing that requires shedding assumptions and routine ways of doing things. It requires thinking expansively about the law in ways that the "legal situation" does not always permit but which it occasionally needs. It has made me a particular type of lawyer and maybe I am a better lawyer because, in my limited practice experiences, I can operate in a context that is free from the limitations on the routine practice. I am generally called to be strategic (and, to a lesser extent, tactical) but rarely executory. Still, it has been a wonderful reconnection with what I long ago regarded as the essence of practicing law.