This address was given to the charter class of the BYU Law School on August 30, 1973 (four days after the ﬁrst opening of the school)

Hafen, Bruce C.

English

Brigham Young University Law School

Brigham Young University Law SchoolBYU Law Digital CommonsVol. 1: Answering God's Interrogatories Life in the Law10-16-2002ProfessionalismBruce C. HafenFollow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.law.byu.edu/life_law_vol1Part of the Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility CommonsThis Unto What Were Ye Ordained? is brought to you for free and open access by the Life in the Law at BYU Law Digital Commons. It has beenaccepted for inclusion in Vol. 1: Answering God's Interrogatories by an authorized administrator of BYU Law Digital Commons. For more information,please contact hunterlawlibrary@byu.edu.Recommended CitationHafen, Bruce C., "Professionalism" (2002). Vol. 1: Answering God's Interrogatories. 19.https://digitalcommons.law.byu.edu/life_law_vol1/19ProfessionalismBruce C. HafenThe announced subject of my remarks is something about law schoolactivities. The handout you have received tells you most of what you needto know on that subject in an immediate and practical sense. What thehandout does not say, however, is that the purpose of everything we do inthis law school, formally and informally, is to make of you an attorney andcounselor at law, a lawyer, a member of the bar, part of a learned and nobleprofession. Whether you come to understand the special meaning of thosetitles is a matter for your own discovery.You will not learn, merely from reading the cases, that special combina-tion of skill, insight, and selﬂessness that work together to create a trulyprofessional counselor at law. But I daresay that if you do not make thisdiscovery, really as a by-product of what we do in the classroom, you willleave this campus three years hence not much more than a relatively sophisti-cated money grubber and may always wonder why all that lofty languageabout being a professional seems so full of emptiness.What does it mean, that word “professional”? Oh, it might mean playingfootball for money instead of for fun. Or maybe it means competentlyexecuted, a “professional” job, something done by a “real pro.” You maywonder if the word diﬀers in any material sense from “trade” or “occupa-tion.” Some will tell you it means joining up with the “establishment,” theguardians of the existing power structure.I must confess that the word did not mean much to me when I graduatedfrom law school, or even when I practiced. But just lately, for some reason,some concepts ﬁlled with meaning—intellectual, social, and spiritual—have come to my mind in association with the word “professional.”I think it began when I was giving an oral examination to an HonorsProgram student who was planning to enter medical school. I wanted to asksome question that would probe the range of his mind in connection with his vocational choice, but I did not know much about medicine. Ibelieve I ﬁnally put the question this way: “The law protects as privileged—that is, not admissible as evidence in a court of law—the conﬁdential147communications between a lawyer and his client, a priest and a penitent,and a doctor and his patient. What do these three roles, lawyer, priest, andphysician, have in common that justiﬁes this important legal privilege?”His brow furrowed, a few beads of sweat appeared. Finally, he ventured,“Well, they all go to school a long time, and at least the doctors and lawyersmake a lot of money.” “Not all of them,” I replied. That was all he said, butI continued to think about it.Then I noticed in some reading I was doing for another purpose (thoughI’m sure I was aware of it before) that these three were the ﬁrst, and formany years the only, ﬁelds of higher education, the oldest, the most tradi-tional of all learned endeavors in western civilization. Much later, thescholar—the university teacher and researcher—was added by some to thislist. However, in recent years many occupations, from salesmen to hobos,have claimed an interest in the status imputed by that word “profession.”Just lately, I ran across a brilliant little analysis by a sociologist namedGoode of whether “the big three” or “big four,” depending on a minor dis-tinction or two, will or should ever be displaced as the central professions.You will be relieved to know that Goode doesn’t think any of the other ﬁeldswill make it, but more important than his conclusion is his explanation ofwhat it is that makes the traditional professions unique.Some of the characteristics that distinguish a true profession are thefollowing. (I will be using Goode as a point of departure, but do not blamehim for what follows.)() Members of the profession have mastered an abstract body oferudite knowledge that can and does solve complex and highlypersonal problems.() The knowledge and skills involved are suﬃciently diﬃcult thatthey are not accessible to the ordinary man, by his own eﬀorts oreven with help. Thus, only other professionals in the same ﬁeld canjudge the competence of their fellows.() The practitioner rather than the client determines the client’s needs.() The profession demands real sacriﬁce from practitioners bothideally and in fact.() The problems with which the profession deals are so sensitive andso important that incompetence within the profession is highlydangerous, both to the individual client and to society.() As a result of the kinds of facts just mentioned, the lay society hasno alternative but to trust the professional, even to the extent oflaying bare to him its most intimate and threatening fears in acomplete leap of faith, thereby entrusting the professional not onlyProfessionalism148with conﬁdential facts but also with enough power and controlover their lives that he can truly bless or tragically exploit them.() If the professional puts his own self-interest or the interests ofothers who would exploit his position above that of the client, henot only should not, but actually cannot perform the task he isengaged to perform. Thus, the very nature of the needs he is sup-posed to meet requires trust, devotion to selﬂess ideals, andobjectivity. If those elements do not characterize the professionalrelationship, he is not really a professional at all, and he is not infact performing the function recognized over the last severalcenturies as indispensable. The function he is performing, on theother hand, is quite dispensable.In another interesting treatise1 on the role of the major professions inAmerican history, it is noted that one fundamental question has been thesource of society’s anxiety about the role of the learned professions. Thatquestion is, “Their interest or God’s?” In other words, people have tradi-tionally believed that the allegiance of professionals was to God, or in morerecent years, at least to higher values and principles than their own self-interest. But because of the absolute necessity, if problems are to be solved,of entrusting professionals with total power to deal as they will with sensi-tive personal matters as well as with the resources of society, people havealways been, to use a modern phrase, a little antsy about what professionalswill do with that power. Whenever it appears that a person with power tobless our lives or curse them might really be motivated by something otherthan our best interests, we panic and instinctively want to take back thatgrant of trust that has left us so vulnerable. Once the trust is gone, we keepfrom professionals what they must have to perform their intended task—our secrets.Let me take you back now, for a moment, to the question I posed to theHonors student. Shortly after that interview, I asked another Honors studentinformally how he might have answered that question. His response wasmore provocative. “What do the lawyer, doctor, and priest have in common?”he repeated. “I think they are all healers, those to whom we open up ourinnermost secrets when something seems to threaten our very lives, physi-cally, spiritually, or in some other way that would destroy our liberty or ourproperty, our chance to live. And we go to them to be healed, to be madewhole, and to retain control over our lives.”That student and I have since discussed the possibility that in ancienttimes the healer, the source of justice and life of both body and spirit, wasGod and those who actually represented him. The complete dependence ofmen upon God to bring about justice or maintain the quality of life was aBruce C. Hafen 149true reﬂection of man’s natural relationship to Him. But when God graduallyreceded from apparent participation in the lives of most men, as theysupposed, those roles still had to be ﬁlled. The nature of man and his mostcrucial problems required it. And thus the other healers arose, and men’sfaith in them continued, sometimes warranted, sometimes unwarranted.My student friend believes it was because of the ancient power of the truepriesthood that the lawyers and judges, the scholars, and the other holdersof power, political and otherwise, assumed the tradition of wearing robes inan imitation of the priesthood robes that had originally symbolized theauthority and power of the great healer. I leave that possibility for yourcontinued reﬂection.But my commentary on the learned professions is not completebecause in recent times, the citadel of status and power represented by theprofessionals has been under heavy assault as society increasingly sees thatcitadel as a symbol of money and self-interest rather than actual service. Letme quote another recent study of professional life in America:The professions justify themselves as organized eﬀorts to assure that society’svital needs are met: the need for justice, for health, for knowledge, for spiritualguidance, for communication, for governance, for the creation and mainte-nance of a physical environment, for the socially responsible provision ofgoods and services.But over the past ten years we are forced to recognize that something is amiss.Vital needs are unmet, and the organized professions seem perversely orarrogantly opposed to change. Vast increases in funding for medicine, educa-tion, law and welfare have been accompanied by declines in service to thosemost in need.The young have learned this lesson almost too well. Five years ago, PaulGoodman taught a course on “Professionalism” at the New School for SocialResearch in New York City. Goodman brought in professionals to explain“the obstacles that stood in the way of honest practice and their own lifeexperiences in circumventing them.” These professionals were rejected by thestudents, who called them “liars, ﬁnks, mystiﬁers, or deluded.” Goodmanrealized that the students “did not believe in the existence of real professionsat all; professions were concepts of repressive society.”2Therefore, this study reports, there has been increasing agitation “toreplace the unresponsive hierarchies that now exist to serve entrenchedinterests with new, humane professions that really serve their clients,particularly the poor.”3 The twin goals of those who actively lead suchmovements are, “ﬁrst, to transform the institutions of society (rather thanmerely augment or support their word), and secondly, to liberate, ratherthan merely to help, the oppressed and the poor.”4 Note that the advocatesof this position believe that “the most important insight of recent years [is]Professionalism150that political organization is not enough, that civil society and culture mustbe reconstructed”5 in order to achieve the reforms they believe are needed.I, too, am a professional. I have felt the inner tug and pull of my interestsagainst those of a client. I have seen some of the hypocrisy to which referencehas been made. But my view of the solution to such dilemmas diﬀers fromthose I have mentioned. The reformers may be quite right these days thatthe healers and others to whom we have entrusted our power have notalways proven worthy of that trust, not only in highly visible places but atthe grassroots level as well. However, that does not change the facts estab-lished by the ages.The needs of men for the healing power have not vanished. But if theneeds go unmet, if the healers do not heal, I say, that is because of the heartsof the healers, not because of the transitory social fabric of our day. Oh, itis true, if the custodians of life and liberty and justice have turned theirpower to bless into a power to curse, then that social fabric of which wespeak may just come all unraveled. But the symbol of the robes remains asthe symbol of the healing power. There is no such power in the symbols ofdestruction and anarchy, and changes in environment simply do notchange men’s hearts.The real question for you, for me, and for all who assume the respon-sibility of the professional tradition is whether we really do prove worthy ofthe trust. Can our hearts be changed enough that it really is a selﬂessinterest we serve? I happen to believe they can. And also by a leap of faith,this law school has committed itself to the proposition that they will, not byforce or pedantic incantations, but by your private discoveries, borne ofrighteous desires.May I close with a homespun little story? I am told that my sister wasvisiting her grandparents years ago, when she was about three or four. Shelonged for their attention after supper but found them invariably readingthe newspaper for what must have seemed like an awfully long time. Soonshe gave up on breaking through the newsprint wall and began trying toread the discarded pages herself, since it seemed to be so interesting. But shecouldn’t, try as she would. Then she noticed that both her grandfather andher grandmother were wearing glasses. Aha, she thought, that is how theymake sense of all those letters and numbers. So she went to Grandma withthe sincere request, “Grandma, could I borrow your glasses so I can read thepaper, too?”Ladies and gentlemen, the power is not in the glasses. It is not in therobes or the titles or the credentials. It is in the man or the woman who hassomehow attuned his or her life to the sources of the true healing power,thereby himself becoming a source of the power, as the branches on a vine.That can be done, and is done, quite independently of religious aﬃliationsBruce C. Hafen 151or theological frameworks, as demonstrated by the stirring examples ofthe true professional whose names and writings you will soon begin toencounter in the great books and cases of the law.May you discover and give yourself to the same secrets that they did,not only because your life will thus become more rich, but more impor-tantly, because you as a counselor at the law may thus make a profound diﬀ-erence in the lives of the people and the society whom you aspire one dayto serve.This address was given to the charter class of the BYU Law School on August , (four days after the ﬁrst opening of the school). Reprinted from the ClarkMemorandum, Fall , –.Bruce C. Hafen received his J.D. from the University of Utah in  and served asDean of the J. Reuben Clark Law School –. He is currently a member of theFirst Quorum of the Seventy.Notes. Daniel H. Calhoun, Professional Lives in America: Structure and Aspira-tion, – (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, )..Ronald Gross and Paul Osterman, eds., The New Professionals (), ,citing “The New Reformation,” New York Times Magazine,  September .. Id. at , quoting Joseph Featherstone, Schools Where Children Learn(), x.. Id. at .. Id. at – .Professionalism152

Professionalism

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