Seamon, Richard Henry

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D. Benjamin Beard: A Law Professor for All Seasons

University of Idaho College of Law

UIdaho Law Digital Commons @ UIdaho Law Articles Faculty Works 2020 D. Benjamin Beard: A Law Professor for All Seasons Richard Henry Seamon Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.law.uidaho.edu/faculty_scholarship  Part of the Legal Biography Commons, and the Legal Education Commons IDAHO LAW REVIEWII. D. BENJAMIN BEARD: A LAW PROFESSOR FOR ALL SEASONSby Richard SeamonD. Benjamin Beard is old school in the best sense, a sense that is increasinglylost upon those of us in modern academia, to our loss. Accordingly, on the occasionof Ben's retirement, we as Ben's colleagues at the College of Law can best honorBen by striving to emulate the timeless qualities that Ben has brought-and tomatch the enduring contributions that Ben has made-to the College.When I came to the College in 2004, Ben was serving as the associate dean,a position he held from 2000-2006. When you read that Ben was the associatedean, you might wonder, "Associate dean for what?" It is an understandablequestion, considering that today the College is blessed with four associate deans,each with different responsibilities and different titles. In 2004, however, Ben wasthe one and only associate dean. He was associate dean for students andadministration-the veritable chief cook and bottle washer.And remarkably, Ben managed to do it all, and to do it with his customarilyexacting attention to detail and high standards for his work product. Ben draftedthe course schedule. Ben counseled students who were failing their courses. Benfielded complaints from students about members of the faculty and staff thestudents perceived were not serving the students well. Ben oversaw buildingprojects and upkeep. And to do all this while meeting his family obligations, Benwas almost always the first person in the building every morning, excluding thecustodial staff. This early-bird approach, plus Ben's amazing abilities to organize,prioritize, and focus, enabled him to fulfill his associate dean roles without missinghis children's soccer practices and other family events.I had the good fortune to see Ben's associate deaning in action when Ishadowed him for one semester before taking on an associate-dean role myself in2006. (By that time, my former colleague, Elizabeth Brandt, had become theassociate dean for faculty, leaving me to serve as just the associate dean forstudents.) From shadowing Ben, I not only learned how to be an associate dean butalso, over time, came to learn how generous a man, how loyal a colleague, and howgreat a teacher and scholar Ben is.As for generosity, Ben was generous with the most valuable commodity anyof us has: his time. When it came to giving his time to the College, Ben alwaysstepped forward to do whatever needed to be done without making a big deal of itor expecting credit. Besides his stint as associate dean from 2000-2006, he heldthat role beforehand, as acting associate dean in the spring of 1998, and againafterwards, as interim associate dean for six months in 2012. And Ben contributedgreatly to College operations in other roles, such as by overseeing the drafting ofthe College's self-study in preparation for American Bar Association (ABA)accreditation. And by planning extensive building updates for the installation ofclassroom technology. And by frequently chairing the curriculum committee,including during an extensive update of the first-year curriculum. And by co-founding the Early Welcome Program for incoming students who needed extra timeadjusting to attending law school in Moscow, Idaho. Not to mention the hundredsof hours Ben devoted over many years to service on the admissions committee.598 VOL. 56FACULTY TRIBUTE ESSAYSI could go on. Indeed, I could expand this tribute to the length of a traditionallaw review article if I were to attempt to describe all of Ben's service contributionsto the College. Suffice it to say that perhaps more than any other, single person,Ben built and, for a long time, maintained the College's infrastructure. Although Icannot exhaustively catalog Ben's contributions to the College's operation, I hope Ihave said enough to show that-in his generous devotion of time to many thanklesstasks associated with running the College-Ben exemplifies another quality thatseems increasingly rare in modern academia: loyalty to an institution.Ben came to the College of Law in 1987, after graduating from college andlaw school with top honors-Phi Beta Kappa and Order of the Coif, respectively-and after five years of full-time practice at a major law firm in Cleveland, Ohio. Sincethen, Ben has spent his entire academic career, spanning thirty-three years, at theCollege. He has been the stabilizing influence through seven university presidents,innumerable university budget crises, and continuous law school ups and downs.Thus, Ben is the antithesis of the flighty modern academic who alights at aninstitution only until a perceived-to-be-better perch becomes available. Ben hasbeen a pillar of the College.Ben has provided stability and continuity to the College in ways that gobeyond his involvement in discrete administrative positions and projects. Ben hasdeveloped an invaluable store of institutional knowledge and a university-widereputation for collegiality and sagacity. More than that, Ben has conveyed andexemplified the College's unique culture. It is a culture of civility, high standards ofethical conduct, selflessness, mutual support, and devotion to serving others. It is aculture that has positively shaped Ben's faculty colleagues, the College's graduates,and, in turn, the Idaho legal profession.Even while devoting so much time to serving the College, Ben developed aninternational reputation as a commercial law scholar. Ben drew upon his five yearsof law firm practice to publish multiple law review articles on issues of commerciallaw. Ben also devoted much time to applied-scholarship projects of the ABA andthe National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws (also known asthe Uniform Law Commission or "ULC"). For example, Ben served from 2008-2010as a Reporter for the ULC's Committee to Implement the United Nations E-Commerce Convention. Ben was also, from 1996-2000, a Reporter for the ULCproject that drafted the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act, a uniform law enactedby 47 States, including Idaho. In addition to these national roles, Ben has served asan ABA representative at the international level: as ABA representative to theUnited Nations Commission on International Trade Law, and as a law schoolrepresentative for the ABA's Central and Eastern European Law Initiatives. Ben hasthus vividly shown how a law professor in isolated Moscow, Idaho, can develop aninternational reputation through scholarly contributions with global, real-worldimpact.Despite his abundant generosity and loyalty and his achievements as ascholar and a mainstay of the College, I believe that Ben will be remembered bestfor his gifts as a teacher. I have had a chance to identify those gifts because I haveseen Ben teach many times, including in his role as a charter faculty member for2020 599IDAHO LAW REVIEWthe Early Welcome Program described above. Ben is a great teacher for manyreasons: his clarity, his transparent organization, his sharp attention to detail, andhis engaging presence. But the quality that, I believe, is the key to Ben's giftednessis Ben's deep, genuine caring for his students.A sign in Ben's office expresses Ben's distinctive way of showing his care forhis students. The sign says, "I yell because I care." Using that approach in theclassroom, for example, Ben would help students understand the most importantpoints by making them emphatically-indeed, by shouting if the point deservedparticular attention. To modern sensibilities, Ben's use of emphasis might registeras microaggressive. However that may be, hundreds of Ben's former students willattest to its effectiveness. Those former students will, in the same vein, attest tothe effectiveness of having seen Ben display impatience with students who cameto class poorly prepared, even though such a negative emotion goes against thegrain of the modern tendency in some quarters to praise students just for showingup.And now we come to what might seem least comprehensible to somemodern academics: When Ben discovered that a student was poorly prepared forclass (and who hadn't given Ben an adequate explanation in advance), Ben didn'tseem to care much about why the student was ill-prepared. Instead-just like thejudges before whom that student would soon appear as an attorney, and just likethe clients upon whose livelihoods the student's preparedness as an attorneywould soon depend-all Ben cared about was the lack of adequate preparation, notthe excuse for it. In this way Ben taught our students the invaluable life lesson thatwhen you fail to live up to your obligations, most people will only remember yourfailure, not your excuse for it.I have been in legal education long enough to see many fads come and gowhen it comes to educational theories and methods. As Dooley Wilson famouslysang, "The fundamental things apply ... [a]s time goes by."7 I thank Ben for teachingme the fundamental things that apply to being a great colleague, a great teacher,and above all, a good man.' Herman Hupfeld, As Time Goes By (1931).VOL. 56600FACULTY TRIBUTE ESSAYSImage courtesy of Kendal JohnsonAdditional Comments from Faculty, Staff & StudentsPatrick Fackrell '16Dear Professor Beard:WI79Congratulations'' I hope you know how significantly your teaching anddedication impacted me. I can safely say that I would not be where I am today wereit not for Property and Sales with you. Your classes always challenged me; yourteaching style always motivated me. Thank you for everything. I wish you manyhappy years of fly fishing.Kelsey Gooden '18I want to congratulate Professor Beard on his retirement. His class was thevery first I had in law school, contracts in August of 2016. He was tough; everyonewho has had the pleasure of his teachings knows that. But, along with all those highexpectations, he certainly taught me a lot. Not a day goes by in my work as a lawyerthat I do not think of something he taught me. Thank you, Professor Beard. I wish6012020602 IDAHO LAW REVIEW VOL. 56you all the best in your future endeavors (and gosh I hope there are no typos orgrammatical errors in that -ha!)Carolyn Todd, StaffBen: One of the things I always appreciated about Ben was his ability to reachout with the right language when times were tough. When he was Associate Deanduring the early days of Iraq and Afghanistan, he responded to a number ofstudents who were serving over there and shared the emails with all of us. Thatmeant so much to me, because my son was there as well. Plus i love his sign - "Iyell because I care." Truth.

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D. Benjamin Beard: A Law Professor for All Seasons

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