All Things Shining at the ABA Forum

This past week our Forum Officers, George Meyer, Jim Schenck, and Andy Ness, presided over the ABA Forum on Construction Law planning retreat held at The Sagamore Resort on an island in Lake George (the lake named after George) in up-state New York. They were joined by the Governing Committee, the editor and assistant editor of the Construction Lawyer, the editor of Under Construction, the Division Chairs, our ABA staff person, spouses and children. Past chairs Robbie MacPherson and Adrian Bastianelli lent their experience to the proceedings.

The planning retreat is an august gathering in June of individuals who have each put in years of service on behalf of the Forum. We are all beneficiaries. Without their tremendous efforts the Forum would not produce such high quality educational programs and publications, the construction bar as a whole would hold its head less high, and our professional friendships would be more local, more isolated. Our professional lives would be less idealistic, more impoverished. But why have these talented, energetic, and successful individuals chosen to donate thousands of hours of non-billable time on behalf of the Forum. Why should you become involved?

In their recent book “All Things Shining,” Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Kelly, professors of philosophy at UC Berkeley and Harvard, advocate for the Homeric world view that we are at our best when we respond to the virtues outside of us, when we align ourselves with the gods, if you will. It’s not all about us! This world view is marked by a deep sense of gratitude for the good things that happen to us, and an appreciation that we can never fully take credit for our successes, just like our failures involve forces and constraints outside of our control. It includes a recognition that when we are at our best, the virtues carry us along; they are not fully of us.

As individual lawyers we work hard at marketing, advancing our clients’s best interest, making our firms profitable. Sometimes we are lucky in the clients we have, sometimes not; sometimes we are lucky in the facts we have, sometimes not; sometimes we are fortunate in the judgments we receive, sometimes not. None of this is entirely within our control. Similarly, the shining virtues embodied in the Forum, Homer would say, exist somehow outside of ourselves. When we align ourselves with those virtues—scholarship, sharing knowledge generously to advance the profession as a whole, taking time to foster a deep, meaningful, and lasting network of professional friendships, mentoring younger lawyers (whether they are at our firm or not), providing opportunities for all—then we are leading virtuous professional lives.

Does our involvement in the Forum increase our billable hours? No it does not. Does it lead to enhanced professional competence, visibility, reputation and referrals? Yes it does; but that is not the ultimate point. The Forum is a vehicle for aligning ourselves with those shining professional virtues outside of ourselves. As Adrian Bastianelli said in his tribute for Terry Galganski, and as Terry advocated, the Forum helps make insurance law sexy. To close with a paraphrase of Adrian, long live the shining virtues of professionalism, long live the Forum. Indeed!