Dorothy’s Advice for Lawyers

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Film Friday

In a 2006 commencement address to the University of Richmond Law School, John Douglass outlined how The Wizard of Oz can serve as a guide for lawyers. His brother Brent, husband of Carter Douglass whose children-in church poem I published two weeks ago, alerted me to it, and since it fits this blog so well,  I pass it along to you. John is now dean of the law school. I pick up his speech after his opening remarks:

By John Douglass, Dean, University of Richmond Law School

I will do what law professors do best. I will talk for just a few minutes about a famous case. One of my favorites. The case of the Wizard of Oz.

Perhaps you’ve never realized that the Wizard of Oz is actually about the law. But it is. In fact, I suggest, most lessons worth learning about the practice of law can be learned through a visit with the Wizard.

Like most great cases, this case starts with a client who gets into trouble. Dorothy, a somewhat rebellious juvenile, has a conflict with a neighbor over a dog. Now to many of us, that might not seem very important. But to Dorothy, it’s the most important thing in her world. Important enough that it causes her to leave home and to see her whole world literally turned upside down. She finds herself in Oz, a place where nothing seems familiar.

And that’s the first lesson from Dorothy’s case. Clients are people in trouble. And trouble, like the land of Oz, is a scary, unfamiliar place. As lawyers, that can be hard to understand. But in order to serve your clients, you need to understand how scary the world can look from their perspective.

And you can if you put in a little effort. I suggest a simple exercise.

Think back to the last time you went to see a doctor. How did you feel in that world? You sat in a sterile looking room with a bunch of strangers. You glanced at each other, wondering what kinds of diseases you might catch if you breathed too deeply. You watched and waited as names were called and people went through a door. Did you notice how lots of people disappeared through that door but nobody ever seemed to come back.

To our clients, the world of law can be like that doctor’s waiting room. As strange and scary as the land of Oz.

You may remember the scene when Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion first enter the chamber of the Wizard. Oz appears as a large disembodied head, surrounded by smoke and flame. Dorothy asks the Wizard for help. The Wizard, in turn, demands that she bring him the broomstick of the Wicked Witch of the West.

And there’s another important lesson from the Wizard to new lawyers. Always get your retainer up front.

You know what happens next. Dorothy liquidates the Wicked Witch and returns to do business with the Wizard. Oz puts her off: “Come back tomorrow,” he tells her. When she balks, Oz bellows, “Do you presume to criticize the great and powerful Wizard of Oz?” At that moment Toto tugs at a black curtain and exposes a little balding guy pulling at levers. “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain ….”

Dorothy, to put it mildly, is pissed. She lets him have it. “You’re a very bad man.”

Then the Wizard pauses, and delivers the best line in the whole movie: “Oh no, my dear.” He says. “I’m a very good man. I’m just a very bad wizard.”

And that, I suggest, is the heart of our lesson from the Wizard. Oz is right. He is a crummy Wizard. The smoke and mirrors routine don’t sell at all with his clients. But he is in fact a very good human being. And when Oz comes out from behind that curtain, he can use that humanity with his clients, the people who need his help. You may remember what happens then. Oz speaks one by one with each of his clients: the Scarecrow, the Lion, the Tin Man, and Dorothy. And he helps each one solve a problem.

All lawyers feel temptations toward wizardry creeping into their practices from time to time. If it happens to you, don’t be afraid. Just take a moment with your client, face to face, as Oz did. Ask your client how he feels about your work. Ask if she understands why the lawsuit is taking so long, or whether she has questions about the costs, the risks. Make the law accessible to your client. And don’t be afraid to admit what you don’t know. For a moment you may be concerned that you don’t sound much like a wizard. But you’ll get over that. And one day you’ll wake up and recognize that you are becoming a pretty good lawyer.

You know how the story ends. The Wizard turns to each of his clients and pulls a gift for each of them from a large black bag. Since gifts are a tradition at graduations, it seems fitting that I should complete our little journey through Oz by offering you those same gifts. The gifts of the Wizard.

The first gift is a brain for the scarecrow. Graduation, you might say, is a celebration of the brain. For three years you’ve been learning to think like a lawyer, and that’s a skill worth celebrating. You’ve learned to think on your feet, to get to the heart of an issue. You’ve been rewarded for cleverness, for thinking quickly. But as we celebrate that achievement, let me also suggest to you the virtue of thinking slowly. Of reasoning together with your clients, with your colleagues, and especially with your adversaries. There is a great deal of heartache and waste in our world that comes from rushing to judgment, from reacting out of fear or insult and based on limited facts. Too often lawyers contribute to that heartache and waste when we should be counseling the opposite. To me, the greatest calling of a lawyer is the call to be a peacemaker. The world needs smart people like you to resolve conflict. Use your brain in pursuit of peace.

The second gift of the Wizard, the gift to the Tin Man, is a heart. The human heart is a complicated thing. Oz defines it for the Tin Man in the simplest of terms. It’s what makes you tick.

For the faculty, one of the most exciting days of the academic year is the final day of first-year orientation, when the whole class assembles in the moot courtroom and Dean Rahman tells us who you are as a class. Every year we are in awe of you. And it’s not just your LSATs and GPAs. It’s when we learn how many of you have volunteered at homeless shelters and crisis centers. How many have built homes for Habitat or taught disabled children.

You came here in part because of your brains, that’s true. But you came in equal measure because of your hearts.

Thinking like a lawyer means more than matching facts to legal principles. It means understanding that legal problems have human dimensions. And that understanding comes first from the heart.

The last gift of the Wizard is courage. Courage is hard to define but easy to recognize. As Oz says to the Lion, “Back where I come from, we have men we call heroes.” I’m sure you all have heroes. It helps to look at their examples from time to time. Let me offer you one.

We are all privileged to have shared this law school with Robert Merhige, who died last year after decades of distinguished service as a federal judge. Judge Merhige came to the federal bench more than a decade after the U.S. Supreme Court held that our constitution opens schoolhouse doors to all children, on an equal basis, regardless of their color. But the constitution doesn’t enforce itself. It only works when people of courage stand behind it. Judge Merhige stood up for the rule of law when the most powerful forces in our commonwealth were content to ignore it.

As lawyers, you will need the gift of courage, a gift that Judge Merhige possessed in great measure. You may be asked to represent an unpopular client or an unpopular cause. You will need courage to endure unfair criticism, as Judge Merhige did.

You may encounter a client, or even a partner, who knows he can break the rules and not get caught. On those occasions you may look around the room and wait for someone else to speak, but it won’t happen.

Those are the times when it will take all of the courage you can muster just to open your mouth. Have the courage to speak up.

So there you are. Your graduation gifts from the Wizard: A brain. A heart. Courage.

But if you remember the story well, you know I’ve left something out. Oz was a very bad wizard. Try as he might, he had no power to grow a brain, or a heart, or to instill courage.

But Oz was a very good man. And Oz, the good man, gave each of his new friends a gift far more precious than the tangible gifts that he pulled from that bag. He gave them insight. He opened their eyes to see that they had possessed these gifts all along inside themselves.

Maybe that insight is the greatest graduation gift of all. An education is not so much about creating a new self. It’s about finding, and using, what’s been in you all along.

And so, on behalf of the faculty, I ask you to accept our congratulations and these graduation gifts: the gifts of the Wizard.

A brain, to use in pursuit of peace and justice.

A heart, that senses what is right and yearns to achieve it.

Courage, to speak the truth.

And most of all, the faith in yourself to recognize that you have possessed each of these gifts inside yourselves all along.

Remember your gifts. Use them well. And come back to see us from time to time.

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