At the San Diego County Bar Association’s judicial reception last week, I enjoyed the opportunity to talk with a lot of my favorite colleagues in our legal community, as well as to meet some new faces. Some who particularly impressed me were several first-year law students. They not only attended the event, but also significantly engaged with other guests. When I was a law student, that gregarious approach with members of the bar was not in my nature. Maybe, back then, I felt it was too hard to find common ground, or maybe I just did not then realize the importance of it. But the concept of this being a profession that is most effectively practiced by those with strong, established relationships is one that has been reinforced seemingly every day of my career.
One striking example of this is Judge J. Clifford Wallace, whom Duke Law School recently honored with its Bolch Prize for the Rule of Law. The award recognizes those who have “demonstrated extraordinary dedication to the rule of law and advancing rule of law principles around the world.” Judge Wallace has rendered over fifty years of extraordinary service as a federal judge, including as Chief Judge of the Ninth Circuit, the country’s biggest federal appeals court. He co-founded the American Inns of Court movement, which now boasts hundreds of chapters and tens of thousands of members and alumni across America. But, in addition to that, he has formed and nurtured relationships with other judges and lawyers around the world.
Judge Wallace’s outreach has included consulting with judges in China to establish economic courts, helping to establish administrative processes in Africa to improve court efficiency, introducing mediation programs to Thailand, and helping to create mobile court systems to ease access to remote areas of Guatemala. Of course, none of that work would have been possible if Judge Wallace had not established relationships with judicial leaders in those areas. At least one of those jurists, Tassaduq Hussain Jillani, the former chief justice of Pakistan, describes Judge Wallace as his mentor.
Accolades and honors can swell the ego of the recipient. Impressive professional achievements can bring about complacency, a tendency to rest on laurels. The most successful among us are not defined by those things. Instead, they are usually the ones who have the best relationships. The trust and affection others feel toward them gives them advantages that the smartest or most credentialed person who lacks those relationships can never attain.
Thomas Merton wasn’t a lawyer, but he wrote something that applies here: “Do not depend on the hope of results. You may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. You gradually struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything.”
Yours,
David Majchrzak
2022 SDCBA President