Kim, Kristina J.

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Penn State Dickinson Law: IDEAS

Volume 122Issue 1 Dickinson Law ReviewFall 2017Introduction to Section I: In the Beginning . . .Volume 1 and What It Means to Be a LawyerKristina J. KimPennsylvania State University, Dickinson School of LawFollow this and additional works at: https://ideas.dickinsonlaw.psu.edu/dlrPart of the Judges Commons, Legal Education Commons, Legal Ethics and ProfessionalResponsibility Commons, Legal History Commons, and the Legal Profession CommonsThis Section I is brought to you for free and open access by the Law Reviews at Dickinson Law IDEAS. It has been accepted for inclusion in DickinsonLaw Review by an authorized editor of Dickinson Law IDEAS. For more information, please contact lja10@psu.edu.Recommended CitationKristina J. Kim, Introduction to Section I: In the Beginning . . . Volume 1 and What It Means to Be a Lawyer, 122 Dick. L. Rev. 37 (2017).Available at: https://ideas.dickinsonlaw.psu.edu/dlr/vol122/iss1/4ArticlesIntroduction to Section I: In theBeginning . . . Volume 1 and What ItMeans to Be a LawyerThe field of law is ripe with tradition.  One can trace the law’sorigin to antiquity but the law continues to leave its mark on mod-ern times.  While the law changes with time, its purpose remains thesame today as it did in 1897 when Chief Justice Lore stated, withoutpomp, this truism:  “liberty is the aim and end of law, and . . . it is anecessary outgrowth of the maintenance of justice.”1The duty of a lawyer is inextricably tied to the profession’s his-tory and maintenance of the law.  Although the duty of the lawyeris prescribed to the profession as a whole, the acceptance and exe-cution of this duty is personal.  Chief Justice Lore cautions the grad-uating law students to not “be too highly impressed with the dignityand importance”2 of their profession, and reminds the students thattheir devotion to the “profession, [sic] as a science involving allhuman interests”3 will be the hallmark of their personal success.While lawyers are dedicated to the law, lawyers are also dedicatedto their clients, and at many times these two forces diverge.  Al-though these two forces pull the lawyer in diametric directions, it isthe individual journey of each lawyer to find the balance betweenand discover his or her personal reasons for executing these duties.1. Baccalaureate Address Delivered by Charles B. Lore, LL.D., Chief Justiceof the Supreme Court of Delaware, 1 THE FORUM 131 (1897).2. Id. at 133.3. Id.3738 DICKINSON LAW REVIEW [Vol. 122:37What it means to be lawyer is a question we as students aretasked with answering in our first semester of law school.  What weare not told is that we will spend the rest of our professional andpersonal lives answering this question.  Standing in my last year oflaw school, 120 years after Chief Justice Lore delivered the follow-ing words to the graduating class of 1897, his address remains eerilypoignant.Kristina J. Kim

Introduction to Section I: In the Beginning . . . Volume 1 and What It Means to Be a Lawyer

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Introduction to Section I: In the Beginning . . . Volume 1 and What It Means to Be a Lawyer

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Penn State Dickinson Law: IDEAS