Elder Bruce Hafen. I became the dean of the BYU law school in I had been on the faculty earlier, when

Transcription

1 1 Elder Bruce Hafen Founding Collaborator of the J. Reuben Clark Law Society Needs of the young Law School I became the dean of the BYU law school in I had been on the faculty earlier, when the law school first started, but I had been away for about ten years on other assignments. I soon found that by 1985, most of the faculty members were practicing law on the side. That surprised me a little, because I knew what then-byu President Dallin Oaks had expected when the law school began. He had explained to the First Presidency how important it was that the law school faculty be influential scholars in their field. The faculty s scholarly stature would play a key role in the law school s professional reputation and its influence on the development of the law. The First Presidency had agreed with that premise for finding faculty members who would be effective scholars as well as able teachers who could prepare law students to practice at the highest levels of the law. My friends on the faculty were practicing law on the side in 1985 because their salaries weren t adequate. I could see that it was the dean s job to help address that need, if we wanted to maintain a strong faculty and a library and other forms of support needed to produce high quality scholarship. So I began talking to the faculty and looking for ideas. At about that time, I visited the University of Texas Law School, which was by then a fine research-oriented law school that also prepared first-rate practitioners. In those two realms of theory and practice, our aspirations were very similar to theirs. I saw on a law school wall several rows of pictures and plaques representing a large number of endowed professorships. I knew that an endowed chair was a financial endowment large enough to fund a new faculty position the entire salary, benefits, and everything else. But, the Texas dean explained to me, a professorship is a smaller

2 2 endowment that generates enough interest income to supplement an existing salaried position to provide research support. He had found a number of Texas Law School alumni who donated funds for these endowments, typically named for a person whom the donor and the law school wanted to honor. This concept had made a big difference in helping that school s faculty to produce significant scholarly work. As I thought about the Texas example, I wondered where to go to find possible donors. The law school alumni at Texas had played the key role, but our school was too new to have alumni who were established enough to donate substantial endowments. It was only 1985, and our school graduated its first class in So our best graduates were barely becoming partners in their law firms, and it would be a few years before they would be able to help us very much. So I began wondering if there were other senior lawyers who had the kind of interest in our law school that alumni have that is, a stake in the outcome. Were there lawyers other than alumni who had a strong incentive to help our school maintain a superb professional reputation? Meeting with Ralph Hardy That question was in the back of my mind when I made a trip to Washington D.C.. While there, members of my family introduced me to Ralph Hardy, who I think was a stake president in Washington then. As Ralph and I were getting acquainted, he began asking all kinds of questions about the law school. He had done his undergraduate work at the University of Utah, then earned his law degree at Berkeley before beginning to practice in D.C. When I wondered why he was so interested in our school, he told me what he had experienced when the BYU Law School first began.

3 3 His non-lds law partners were very aware of his Church membership. So when the Church announced the creation of a law school at BYU, his partners said, Well, Ralph, we see that your Church is starting a new law school. Is it going to be any good? He explained that he had never gone to BYU, but their reaction told him that didn t matter. He said, I soon realized that my own professional reputation was tied to the reputation of that law school whether I wanted it to be or not. My friends in the legal profession knew that I was an active member of the Church, they knew that BYU was strongly supported by the Church, and so they assumed that whatever happened with that law school would say something about me. As soon as he understood that, Ralph talked to some LDS friends in Washington who saw the same issue. So they flew out to the dedication of the law school, where they heard Justice Lewis Powell give the opening talk, and they became acquainted with the law school s leaders. They thought, You know, this law school is off to a great start. Dallin Oaks is here, with Rex Lee and Carl Hawkins this is very promising. After telling me this story, Ralph said, I am really interested in everything you re doing out there. What can I do to help? Then I said, Well, now that you mention it I could see that I was talking to someone like the grey haired alumni from the University of Texas Law School, because he felt just as they would about their law school s reputation. So I said, Let me tell you about a problem I have found coming in as the new dean. I described to him the faculty salary problem and said, What are we going to do about that, Ralph--do you have any ideas? He immediately saw the connection between our financial support and the law school s reputation for faculty scholarship. I told him about the Texas professorships then said, I m not sure where to go to start finding donors who would do that for BYU. And he said, Why don t you start with me? I did

4 4 not see myself as making a big sales pitch, but he grabbed the idea and said, let me give you a concept. He said, When I came to Washington as a young lawyer, I really struggled with trying to balance my commitments to my family, the church, and to my profession. The law is a jealous mistress and my firm expected me to be there all hours of the day and night and weekend. I didn t see how I could do it all. Then I became aware that my stake president, Robert Barker, was a fine lawyer. He was also the chairman of the planning committee for the Washington D.C. temple, and he had a wonderful family. As I watched him, I saw, this is how this works--if I can be like President Barker, then I can do it. So Bob Barker became my role model. His example taught me how to balance my priorities, with my first commitments to my family and the church, and still be a fine lawyer. I would say to myself, If he can do it, I can do it. Then Ralph said, I think that the first professorship at the J. Reuben Clark Law School should be named for Robert W. Barker, and I will help raise the money. I was just stunned. He said, Look, I m not just doing you a favor, I have a great interest in this, for all the reasons that I ve just told you. I replied, If you can do this, Ralph, this will set a pattern that will allow us to go to others. And within a short time, we created the Barker Professorship. That put the Barker story in front of our students so they could say, That s what I want to be someone who is as devoted to his family, the Church, and the legal profession as Robert Barker and Ralph Hardy are. That was our first professorship and it was just a win-win in every direction. Since then the law school has established a large number of professorships. I don t know the number now, but our goal was to provide one for virtually every member of the faculty. That s a tall order, but our faculty have always been good enough that, with that kind of support,

5 5 they could do the high quality research and writing we needed to see and still be top quality teachers. We also looked for other role models like Robert Barker for our named professorships, not just for fundraising, but to show our young graduates by example how to live balanced and productive lives. The other need I mentioned to Ralph was that we didn t want all of our graduates to stay in Utah. To fulfill the school s purpose, we wanted them to be in New York City, in San Francisco, in Washington D.C., Chicago, and so on. Ralph said, Look, there are LDS lawyers in every one of these major cities, just like me, who have an interest in the law school s success. He continued, I would love to help the graduates of this law school. Their strong reputation is in my best interest, and it s in the best interest of the Church. As we continued brainstorming, Ralph said, What if we were to organize some kind of professional society with a significant name that ties it to the law school a name like J. Reuben Clark. But that name isn t exclusive to the law school, it s really broader than that. One of his early ideas was, What if we had a published directory that included all the members of the society? Lawyers are always using professional referrals. I will often get a call from a lawyer from some place like Los Angeles calling me in Washington D.C. to say, I need a lawyer in your firm, in your town; I need a specialist, what can you do for me? That networking is really essential to the way we practice now. The world has become so small. He continued, If we had a directory of the members of that society, then they could call each other. The directory could show their specialties, where they went to school, etc. And just because they have joined a J. Reuben Clark Law Society would tell you a lot about them about their interest in the law school and what it stands for. Lawyers would use the directory, and students who are looking for jobs could use it.

6 6 So, long story short, Ralph Hardy became the first chairman of the law society once we organized it. It was a different organization from the alumni association, because of obvious differences in age and professional experience. That was a long time ago, of course, and some of our alumni are now old enough that we have our own grey heads. But that s the story of how the law society began. Creating the Society Once the concept of creating the law society had been approved at BYU, our next step was to find the best people we could to be on the society s board. Bill Atkin was one of the first board members. This was before he became associate general counsel for the church. Bill was an important early figure. He had an especially good vision about the international implications of the society s work. We talked with our early board members about where we should try to start chapters. We began by identifying the U.S. population centers where we thought there were enough LDS lawyers that it would make sense to try it there. Then we would identify possible chapter leaders in that city. In Southern California we saw room for two chapters, one in San Diego and one in Los Angeles. We began asking lawyers in those areas, Who are the most influential LDS lawyers in your city who would also be good role models for the goals of the society? For instance, after hearing about Lance Wickman of Latham & Watkins from several people, I met with Lance and asked if he could help us with an organizing luncheon and then give some leadership to a San Diego chapter. Elder Wickman was called just a year or two later to be the General Counsel for the Church, and he brought Bill Atkin on board as Associate General Counsel. I think he and Bill

7 7 had met through the law society. He basically did in San Diego what Ralph Hardy was doing in Washington DC. which launched the society with an excellent beginning. Naming the Society The idea of calling this the J. Reuben Clark Law Society was a deliberate way of signaling that there was an overlapping interest between the law society and the law school alumni. We consciously called the alumni simply the alumni association. They and the law society of course have related interests, but they are also different from one another. As time has gone on, I suspect that the overlap has increased, and I m not very close to what has happened in recent years. I expect that the law society has much broader interests than simply supporting the law school. The alumni, I think, have increasingly taken over the role of providing the law school with direct support, which has let the law society move toward the BYU Management Society model as an organization for LDS business professionals. In the beginning we knew this general distinction would eventually emerge, but we were so occupied with getting things started that we didn t spend a lot of time thinking about it. The Clark Memorandum Early on we worked with the board members and the faculty to develop a mission statement for the Society. They were very resourceful. Another idea that came from these early discussions was to publish a really fine periodical for both our alumni and the law society, with excellent graphics as well as content. More than one board member said they would greatly appreciate having a publication that they could place in their law offices for clients and other visitors to see something that would

8 8 communicate in a thoughtful, tasteful way what the law society and the law school were all about. The law school already published a little newsletter that we sent to our alumni a few pages done by secretaries and students on weekends with a mimeograph machine. That is not exactly what people would want to have on their table in the reception area of a big law firm. So we invited some help from the BYU graphics office to work with our law society and alumni leaders. Together they developed the idea of the Clark Memorandum. That title is a takeoff from a significant legal memorandum that J. Reuben Clark had written when he was a lawyer with the U.S. State Department. I think his memo was called the Clark Memorandum on the Monroe Doctrine. We decided right from the beginning that the publication would have a look and feel to it that would make just the right statement about the law school s values. We felt completely comfortable about including well done articles and speeches about the law school s religious mission that dimension of our purpose, combined with our commitment to intellectual and professional rigor, had always given the law school its distinctive character. At the same time, we wanted to include high quality photography and graphics and layout. In a word, we wanted to have a publication worthy of the name of J Reuben Clark. As I have watched that vision unfold over the years, those who publish the Clark Memorandum have been very faithful to that initial idea. They have just done excellent work. The basic budget for the Memorandum has been funded by BYU, but the support of the law society added a clear qualitative edge. Later Years

9 9 In 1989 I left the Law School to be become the Provost (chief academic officer) at BYU when Rex Lee was the university s president. Reese Hansen became the dean after having been associate dean for a number of years. Reese has really been a credit to the law school. His recent appointment as president of the Association of American Law Schools speaks volumes about the impeccable quality and consistency of Reese s work with other law schools, with the American Bar Association, and the AALS. In the early days of the law school s history, on some days weren t sure that the AALS would ever completely accept a law school that is as committed to religious values as it was to professional values. Reese s appointment sends the message that the BYU Law School has earned not only the acceptance but also the respect of the leaders of U.S. legal education. In 1996 I was called as a General Authority and was sent to Sydney, Australia to serve for four years in the Pacific Area Presidency. I was recently reminded of our days in the Pacific when I saw our friend Hans Sorenson, an LDS lawyer and former stake president from New Zealand, who was in Salt Lake City for general conference. As we visited, I asked him what ever happened to our Pacific Chapter of the J. Reuben Clark Law Society. New Zealand and Australia are about as far away from Provo as you get, without being on your way back. Seeing Hans prompted a memory of a meeting we had held in Auckland, which Hans and I attended in the late 1990s. I had become acquainted with a number of LDS lawyers in Australia and New Zealand. I told Hans and a few others there about the J. Reuben Clark Law Society, and they wanted to form a Pacific chapter. Something around LDS lawyers and law students attended that first meeting. As the meeting began, I thought I should see how much the group already knew about the history of the BYU Law School. I began by saying, It all started with Ernest Wilkinson. When

10 10 he was the President of BYU (just before Dallin Oaks was president), he proposed the idea to the First Presidency. As I looked at the blank faces around the room, I said, Is there anyone here who doesn t know who Ernest Wilkinson was? To my astonishment, not one of them ever had heard of Ernest Wilkinson. Because Ernest s shadow was so long and so influential around Provo and Utah, I thought all Church members especially the lawyers would know him. But among LDS lawyers in New Zealand, who was Ernest Wilkinson? That s when I realized that the law society is bigger than the history of BYU. It was clear that the Church, not just BYU, was the binding force in the world-wide community of LDS lawyers. Hans Sorensen just told me that that Pacific Chapter is still going strong. One of their recent meetings was attended by LDS lawyers from both New Zealand and Australia. When we were in Frankfurt, Germany from 2003 to 2007, I was able to attend the organizing meeting for the Frankfurt Chapter of the Law Society. And so it goes throughout the Church and throughout the world. I m immensely grateful to have seen the J. Reuben Clark Law Society become such a force for good all across the globe.