For some reason, I do not have a large number of pictures from law school. I don’t know why other than I did not have a cell phone and I do not remember even having a camera back then. I am sure that I did have a camera, I just do not remember having one. The one picture I do have of law school, was the one taken when I walked across the stage at Barton Colliseum and shook Dean Howard Eisenberg’s hand as he handed me my diploma.
Of course it was not really a diploma, it was a rolled up piece of paper that looked kind of like a diploma. Both of us are smiling at each other. I am smiling like “can you believe I made it?” and he is looking at me like he is thinking “no.”
When I was a third year law student, I tried out for the moot court team. I had taken the moot court class from Dean Eisenberg, and I was sure that I was going to be invited to join the team. When I went to check the board to see who was on the team, my name was conspicuously missing. This caused a physical reaction in me that required me to go directly to the Dean’s office. I stormed into his office and confronted him on his obvious error in judgment. He did not have much to say about it, which really only made me madder. I jumped up out of my seat as quickly as I had come into the office, and succinctly proclaimed that his decision was nothing more than “BS.”
I then left the office. The next day, I found a note in my mailbox that requested my presence in the Dean’s office asap. I went down there sure that I was going to get kicked out of school over my little tirade. I sat in the waiting area, and he called me into his office after about five minutes. I went in and sat down.
The Dean looked me straight in the eye and said that, although he did not personally care about what I did the day before; he felt he had an obligation to teach me about how to act. He went on to give me a short lecture on the requirement that an attorney simply bite their lip and remain silent or at least be respectful in response to a decision of the court no matter how wrong they felt the court was in their decision or their tone.
He told me that was all, gave me a smile, and told me to have a nice day. It is a lesson that I took to heart and have done a very good job of following for the seventeen years I have been practicing. The picture mentioned above was taken about four months later.
That picture now hangs in my office at home. I enjoy looking at it, and the smile on both our faces. But I cannot look at the picture without remembering the lesson he taught me and the times that that lesson has prevented me from being held in contempt.
There have not been many times, but there have been a few. Many lessons from law school have been forgotten. That one is embedded in my brain. Dean Eisenberg was certainly not a mentor to me in the classic sense. But, in that one small way, he was a great mentor to me. He has long ago passed on, and I never even spoke to him about that day after he gave me the lecture. I always wished I had thank-ed him for his patience. Patience is a great thing especially when it comes to people with power.
In addition, knowing how to get your point across without dressing down an “inferior” is certainly a hallmark of a great man. Power is bestowed on a lot of people, not all know how to handle it. I am not proud of that day in the Dean’s office; but in the end, I am glad it happened. I am better off for it. The mistake I made that day has certainly kept me from making bigger mistakes in the future. Learning from your mistakes is always a good thing, even if you are stuck way up in the CHEAP SEATS!