This convocation address was given at the BYU Law School on April 24, 1981

Romney, Marion G.

English

Brigham Young University Law School

Brigham Young University Law SchoolBYU Law Digital CommonsVol. 1: Answering God's Interrogatories Life in the Law10-16-2002A Christ-Like AttitudeMarion G. RomneyFollow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.law.byu.edu/life_law_vol1Part of the Legal Profession Commons, and the Practical Theology CommonsThis What Think Ye Of Christ? is brought to you for free and open access by the Life in the Law at BYU Law Digital Commons. It has been accepted forinclusion in Vol. 1: Answering God's Interrogatories by an authorized administrator of BYU Law Digital Commons. For more information, pleasecontact hunterlawlibrary@byu.edu.Recommended CitationRomney, Marion G., "A Christ-Like Attitude" (2002). Vol. 1: Answering God's Interrogatories. 29.https://digitalcommons.law.byu.edu/life_law_vol1/29A Christ-Like AttitudeMarion G. RomneyOn April , , the Savior appeared to the Prophet Joseph Smith andhis companion, Oliver Cowdery, in the Kirtland Temple. The record of thisvision is found in section  of the Doctrine and Covenants. In verse , theSavior declares:I am the ﬁrst and the last; I am he who liveth, I am he who was slain; I am youradvocate with the Father.Jesus is our advocate with the Father. You young people who havecompleted three years of legal training are about to embark on a life asadvocates. Be the best earthly advocates you can be. Do no overlook thefact, however, that there is a spiritual, an eternal dimension to advocacy. Aswe honor you tonight at your commencement, I challenge you to becomeChrist-like advocates.When the Board of Trustees announced ten years ago this month therewould be a Law School at the Brigham Young University, many wonderedabout the purposes behind our action. I understand that question is stillasked from time to time, and that many of you would be interested inhearing my views concerning the purposes of this Law School. I am notsure it would be worthwhile or even possible for me to give you a completecatalogue of those purposes. Nor is it necessary. Much more important thana list of the Law School’s purposes is this fact: whatever they are (and Iassure you they exist) the best way to achieve them is for you and those whohave graduated before you and those who will graduate after you to respondto the challenge I have laid before you to become Christ-like advocates.What are the characteristics of the Christ-like advocate? I would like todescribe three of these characteristics and illustrate them by using examplesfrom the life of the Savior and from the life of the man for whom this Law245School is named, J. Reuben Clark. I knew President Clark personally. I washis disciple. I learned from him as a lawyer, as a child of God, and as onewho is convinced of the reality of the Restoration. I would urge each of youto become familiar with his life, his ideals, and his principles. You can gainsuch a familiarity by reading his writings—principally Stand Fast By OurConstitution—and also by reading his biography.The ﬁrst characteristic of a Christ-like advocate is integrity. I speak ofintegrity in its broadest sense. No characteristic is more highly prized bymembers of the legal profession.Integrity certainly means honesty, but I believe it includes more thanhonesty. It includes that cornerstone principle of the Savior’s life and teach-ings, a concern for other people. The reason I give such a broad meaning tointegrity is that the word means “completeness” or “wholeness.” I can thinkof no better formula for the complete person than the one the Savior gave: tolove our Heavenly Father and to love other people as ourselves.But how, you may ask, can concern, respect, and even love for otherpeople be reconciled with a lawyer’s duty to vigorously represent his client?I recognize that there is a potential tension between a lawyer’s duty torepresent his client and his obligations to other lawyers and to society as awhole. There are times when this tension will present some diﬃcultproblems. (Those kinds of problems are outside the scope of this evening’sdiscussion, though I would urge, parenthetically, that when those problemsarise, you not hesitate to discuss them with more experienced members ofthe bar. You will ﬁnd your professional colleagues more willing to be helpfulin that respect than you might have anticipated.)For present purposes, I would like to make only three observations.First, neither your obligation to your client nor any other professionalobligation should ever require you to be dishonest or in any other respectto compromise your integrity. Your professional responsibilities neitherrequire nor permit you to deal in overt falsehood or misrepresentation, andif your client insists that you do, get another client.I doubt that any of you will ever have a harder choice to make in thisrespect than President Clark had on one occasion. I hope that you will makeit the same way he did. After many years of struggling, it ﬁnally appearedthat his chances for success might be realized when he became legal counselto the ﬁrst of this country’s multi-national corporations. The corporationchanged presidents, however, and the new president insisted on taking somesteps that were beyond the bounds of what integrity would permit. Presi-dent Clark had to choose between his conscience and ﬁnancial success. Inthe words of the biographer of his law school and professional years, BrotherFrank Fox, Reuben let “the dream [of ﬁnancial success] go glimmering.”1Second, even beyond the requirements of truth-telling, service to theclient and his interests seldom requires the lawyer to sacriﬁce the kind ofA Christ-Like Attitude246civility that is consistent with the Savior’s instruction that we should loveall people, including our enemies. All too often, practicing lawyers confusethe pursuit of their clients’ interests with lack of courtesy and thoughtful-ness toward the opposing lawyer. Most of the time, the two are unrelated.Rarely, if ever, will a client’s interests be advanced by rudeness or discourtesy.Do not discard, as a lawyer, those basic attitudes of concern for other peoplethat you have come to regard as the foundation stone of virtue in general.Third, integrity means being prepared to say or do what must be saidor done, regardless of the consequences. After the Savior fed the ,,many of those who had been fed followed Him to Capernaum. The Saviorknew that they followed Him because He had fed them and would beoﬀended if He declared Himself to be the promised Messiah. Nevertheless,He declared:I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he thatbelieveth on me shall never thirst (John :).Not only those who had followed Him after having been fed but alsoHis own disciples found this declaration troubling. In the Gospel of John,we read that “from that time many of his disciples went back, and walkedno more with him” (John :).A second characteristic of the Christ-like advocate is compassion. Inresponse to the question of “a certain lawyer, . . . who is my neighbour?”, theSavior reminded us of the importance of compassion by relating the Parableof the Good Samaritan (see Luke :–). The Savior was compassionateto all. He reached out to touch the lives of those who were despised becauseof their race, their social condition, or their physical or mental imperfection.We ought to be aware of the needs of individuals beyond our inner circle offamily and friends. As advocates, you should be prepared to assist a clientwho is downtrodden, destitute, or unpopular.We should not overlook, however, the needs of those who are closest tous. Compassion should begin in our own homes. In the course of yourcareer as advocates, there will be a continuing temptation to spend longhours away from your spouse and children. President Clark struggled withthis problem throughout the early years of his career. In October , hiswife, Luacine, suﬀered an allergic reaction to morphine and hovered fortwo hours between life and death. His biographer, Frank Fox, indicates thatthis episode had a profound eﬀect on his life:He seemed to see life through new eyes. His days at the oﬃce grew perceptiblyshorter, while evenings at home lengthened. He learned, in fact, to do muchof his work in a private study upstairs, his books and notes piled around himand his infant son propped on the desk beyond the lamplight. And when thechildren came down with chicken pox in December, he let his work goentirely and became a full-time nurse.2Marion G. Romney 247I hope that you will be perceptive to the needs—temporal and spiri-tual—of your spouse and children and remember that the most importantservice we render in this life is in our own homes.A third characteristic of the Christ-like advocate is teachability. I speakof teachability as a learning process that encompasses not only an aware-ness of our lack of knowledge, but also a desire to learn and improve.The Savior was teachable. The Apostle Paul tells us about the Savior’slearning process in Hebrews:Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suﬀered;And being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto allthem that obey Him (Hebrews :–).As a result of this learning process, the scriptures tell us that “all thatheard him [when He was but twelve years of age] were astonished at hisunderstanding and answers” (Luke :). This learning process continuedthroughout the Savior’s life.You must not regard your legal education as consisting of the threeyears that you have spent in this Law School. This is part of what I meanwhen I counsel that you should be “teachable.” These three years have onlybeen the beginning. The label “commencement” is particularly appropriatefor a lawyer’s training. The great lawyers are the ones for whom the legaleducation process never ends. The longer they practice the more proﬁcientthey become.With your graduation from law school, you will move from one phaseof your legal education to another. The emphasis will also change. Theprincipal emphasis of your law school years has been legal analysis, and toa lesser extent learning substantive rules of law. If you are the kind oflawyer you should be, you will continue to improve those legal analysisskills and to acquire additional learning about the rules of law. But thosewill no longer be the focal points of your continuing legal education.Probably the single time in your professional career when you will knowthe most about the largest number of rules of law will be the day beforeyou take the bar exam. It should not be the point at which you are the bestlawyer. The main focus will now shift to the development of practicalapplication of the analytical abilities and the rules that you have learned inlaw school. You should always approach those tasks with the same enthu-siasm and the same concern as you approached your ﬁrst semester of lawschool. I can think of no higher compliment that could be paid to anylawyer than that at any given time in his life, he was a better lawyer than hehad ever been before.Some of you may have heard a talk given by Francis Kirkham at the LawSchool two years ago this spring on the occasion of the annual Board ofVisitors meeting. During the time that Mr. Kirkham served as a law clerk toA Christ-Like Attitude248Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes of the United States Supreme Court, heheard an oral argument delivered by John W. Davis, who was then in thelate stages of his career. Mr. Kirkham commented to the Chief Justice howimpressed he was that a man of aging years could perform so brilliantly.Hughes response was: “That’s because he’s a lawyer.”I think that Chief Justice Hughes was partially right. Certainly he wasright as to John W. Davis. Unfortunately, not all lawyers are like that. Someeﬀectively stop their learning processes once they leave law school. Theyremain for long periods of time on the same plateau, or even begin a gradual,continuing slide downward. But the great ones are like John W. Davis andJ. Reuben Clark. The longer they live, the longer they practice, the betterlawyers they become. I know of no better example of this characteristicthan J. Reuben Clark. His mind was never satisﬁed. He was always strivingto gain new knowledge and to reach new and higher levels of understanding.In the foreword to the biography of President Clark’s law school and pro-fessional years, I described him as “a man who was, at times, unsure of him-self, a man who altered his decisions, a man who made mistakes andrepented of them . . . a soul who struggled harder than most and who facednumerous obstacles, trying temptations, and severe challenges.”3You, too, will have decisions to make. In the process of decisions you,too, will make mistakes. Those mistakes, and the willingness to recognizethem and learn from them, constitute an important part of the continuallearning process that is characteristic of every good lawyer. They willcontribute to making you the complete lawyer, the whole lawyer, the lawyerof integrity in the broadest sense of that word. In his continual striving togrow and improve, J. Reuben Clark became a Christ-like advocate in boththe earthly and spiritual sense. He also became a Christ-like person. MayGod bless you to achieve what J. Reuben Clark achieved is my prayer in thename of Jesus Christ. Amen.This convocation address was given at the BYU Law School on April , .Reprinted from Speeches at the Sixth Convocation of the J. Reuben ClarkLaw School, Brigham Young University, April , , –.Marion G. Romney (–) received his LL.B. from the University of Utahin . He served as a General Authority –, member of the Quorum ofTwelve Apostles –, and counselor in the First Presidency –.Marion G. Romney 249Notes. Frank W. Fox, J. Reuben Clark: The Public Years (Provo, Utah: BrighamYoung University Press, ), .. Id. at .. Id. at xi.A Christ-Like Attitude250

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A Christ-Like Attitude

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