Postgraduate Information

“I had learnt the true practice of law.  I had learnt to find out the better side of human nature and to enter men’s hearts.  I realized that the true function of a lawyer was to unite parties riven asunder.”

Before disclosing the author of this reflection committing, with the heart and mind of an attorney, to serve the best interests of both sides of an argument, some context and thoughts of my own:

The speaker of the words above earned his law degree in London in 1891.  Upon “graduation” and returning to his native nation with the intention of undertaking the successful practice of law, he was deeply frustrated to find that nothing he had learned in fact applied to the legal situations he was asked to serve in.  His colleagues called him the “briefless barrister.”  After two failed years of attempts to force himself into successful practice, he accepted the chance to start again in a new atmosphere, and went to a new country, South Africa, with hopes that a changed mindset and atmosphere could yield a better outcome for the application of his mind and efforts.  This did in fact work, but the financial and professional success came only after the realization above, which came along with rejecting a legal model in which the author felt the only interests served were the financial interests of the lawyers. 

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“Happy Anniversary! On to the dedication”

Happy Anniversary! On to the dedicationSo read the sign this morning on my front lawn, surrounded by some 14 shovels. The reference, of course, is to Ray and Kay Eckstein Hall, the $85 million new law facility on which Marquette University broke ground a year ago today and which is scheduled to open in summer 2010. The groundbreaking was a memorable event, with more than 800 individuals attending and each being given a shovel to help dig. We intended by this democratic gesture—not just the president, dean, and major donors, but everyone wielding a shovel—to signify that Eckstein Hall will be a resource for the entire community. The speeches by Chief Justice Shirley S. Abrahamson, Seventh Circuit Chief Judge Frank H. Easterbrook, and Trustee Natalie A. Black, along with Father Wild as president, added to the occasion, not least because of their crispness. While the groundbreaking event is preserved in a sense in the pages of the Marquette Law Review, the focus over the past year has been on the construction and the coming building. Professor Michael McChrystal’s interview in Marquette Lawyer and April blog post concerning the building should give some sense as to why we expect that this will be the best law school building in the country. The Law School’s webpage devoted to the building project contains further information, including a time-lapse video that shows the progress over the past 365 days. All is well, except for the fact that I do not know who put those things on my front lawn this morning.

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Sally Soprano/Diego Primadonna for Real

If negotiation professors ever need to argue to their students that their negotiation scenarios are realistic, here is a nice article to share.  A few weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal covered the story of Ronaldo, the Brazilian soccer star, who is interested in making a comeback.  The truth is remarkably similar to the case of Diega Primadonna, offered as a negotiation case in our casebook on dispute resolution, and similar to the case of Sally Soprano, offered by the Program on Negotiation and other textbooks.  Aging star, sidelined by injury, returns to game with creative contract to meet both parties’ needs. 

In March, after 384 days off the field, Ronaldo entered a soccer stadium again, this time wearing the shirt of São Paulo’s Corinthians for a match in an agricultural town of 95,000 deep in Brazil’s interior. Despite lumbering back some 20 pounds overweight, Ronaldo has scored five goals in seven appearances and tapped into a huge fan base in a nation where soccer is called a second religion. There’s already talk about putting the striker back on Brazil’s national team.

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