California Western School of Law

Ramírez, Jorge Alberto

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Iraq War: Anticipatory Self-Defense or Unlawful Unilateralism?

This essay considers the qualities that constitute excellent lawyers in any society. It thereby suggests the qualities that law schools should seek to ensure that their graduates possess as they leave law schools and enter the practice of law

Smith, Steven R.

California Western School of Law 
CWSL Scholarly Commons 
Faculty Scholarship 
2003 
The Meaning of Quality 
Steven R. Smith 
California Western School of Law, ssmith@cwsl.edu 
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 Part of the Legal Education Commons 
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Smith, Steven R., "The Meaning of Quality" (2003). Faculty Scholarship. 115. 
https://scholarlycommons.law.cwsl.edu/fs/115 
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THE MEANING OF QUALITY 
STEVEN R. SMITH* 
Understanding the qualities that make a great lawyer is critical to 
developing excellence in legal education. Legal education is 
enormously important in establishing the level of competency and the 
professional orientation of lawyers as they enter the profession. It is 
essential, therefore, for legal education to have a clear sense of the 
qualities that make excellent lawyers as it considers what constitutes 
high-quality legal education. 
This essay considers the qualities that constitute excellent lawyers 
in any society. It thereby suggests the qualities that law schools should 
seek to ensure that their graduates possess as they leave law schools 
and enter the practice of law. 
Legal education ultimately exists to serve the public. Legal 
education's immediate clients, of course, are its students. The purpose 
of professional education, however, extends beyond students to those 
whom the students will ultimately serve. 
The quality of lawyers is critical to a society. Lawyers are 
ultimately responsible for the administration and structure of justice. 
High-quality lawyers will, therefore, contribute to an improved system 
of justice. The technical competence of lawyers and ability to 
creatively structure transactions contributes enormously to the quality 
of life of individual members of society and to the efficiency of the 
society and economic activity within the society. 
There have been numerous discussions of the qualities a great 
lawyer has. The various descriptions of fine lawyers contain five 
common elements that extend across countries and a wide variety of 
legal systems. Those are the qualities of (1) technical competence, (2) 
creative problem solving, (3) professionalism and commitment, ( 4) a 
sense of justice, and (5) the ability to learn. 
• Dean and Professor of Law, California Western School of Law. J.D., M.A. 
University of Iowa; B.A., Buena Vista College. 
735 
736 SOUTH TEXAS LAW REVIEW [Vol. 43:735 
TECHNICAL COMPETENCE 
A lawyer must first be able to competently perform the various 
tasks necessary to serve clients. Common examples of areas in which 
technical competence is essential include the ability to ascertain and 
use facts, effectively use oral and written communication skills, find 
and understand the law, engage in successful negotiation, draft good 
legal documents, engage competently in litigation and administrative 
procedures, and organize transactions and practice. 
The areas in which a lawyer needs to be competent vary from one 
type of legal practice to another and from one country to another. In 
the United States, one of the things that makes educating new lawyers 
so difficult is that legal education is considered to be a generalist form 
of education, and it is not possible for most students to become 
competent in a narrow slice of the profession while in law school. The 
result is that legal education must try to give students the 
fundamentals in a wide range of skills that make for technical 
competence. 
Mere technical competence, however, is not nearly enough to 
qualify someone as a lawyer. Such competence gives the attorney the 
tools effectively to achieve or implement legal strategies. Those tools, 
however, do not provide the basis for helping clients to decide what 
they want to accomplish and where they want to go. That requires 
additional qualities. 
CREATIVE PROBLEM SOLVING 
Clients generally go to lawyers because the clients have problems 
that have some aspect of a legal issue or because they want to avoid 
legal problems. Lawyers are thus ultimately problem-solvers. This is 
the traditional role of lawyer as "counselor." It is, however, a 
commonly neglected aspect of legal education. 
Problems, essentially, are things that interfere with someone 
achieving a goal. A good lawyer must, therefore, begin as a problem-
solver by helping clients understand and clarify their goals. This can 
be much more difficult than it appears, because many clients come to 
lawyers with a proposed solution to a legal problem they have 
"diagnosed" themselves. The client who sees a lawyer and says, "My 
mental health professional told my boss about my therapy, and I want 
you to sue the bastard," probably does not understand whether or not 
he has a good legal case against the therapist. More importantly, the 
2002] THE MEANING OF QUALITY 737 
client probably has no understanding of the consequences of placing 
his therapy and mental state in litigation. The lawyer who very 
competently begins the process of checking the facts, determining a 
cause of action, and filing a well-written lawsuit may be technically 
competent but is failing the client. 
It would be much better for the lawyer also to have undertaken a 
process of helping the client think about the client's goals, to consider 
alternatives for reaching the goals, and finally to select processes that 
will effectively and efficiently help the client achieve the goals. In a 
breach of confidentiality case, for example, litigation may very well 
not serve the interests or goals of the client. 
Good lawyers also perform the important role of helping clients 
avoid problems. Preventive law is an increasingly important part of 
the job of any good lawyer. Helping clients avoid legal problems is 
much more efficient than solving the problem once it has arisen. 
An essential element of the good lawyer who is a problem-solving 
counselor is the ability to express compassion and caring for the client. 
This is part of the lawyer's working to promote the values and goals of 
the client. It is also often a critical element in helping the client 
consider and accurately describe the client's objectives when faced 
with a legal problem. 
Good lawyers are also creative in the way they serve clients. 
Having determined what the client's goals are, a good lawyer should 
consider new ways of achieving those goals that may be more effective 
or efficient. In many instances, of course, the traditional or common 
approach will be adequate. It is the ability of the attorney to find 
creative ways of addressing problems, or of avoiding them, that makes 
lawyers especially valuable to their clients. 
It is unfortunate that in many countries lawyers are seen not as 
problem-solvers, but as troublemakers. An emphasis in the legal 
profession on our role as problem-solvers will not only improve the 
place of the profession in the mind of the public, but also help us focus 
on the most helpful, meaningful, and satisfying part of our profession. 
The first two qualities of a fine lawyer, technical competence and 
creative problem-solving, help ensure that the lawyer is able to serve a 
client by considering the client's goals and moving efficiently and 
effectively to meet those goals. It is not enough, however, to create an 
excellent lawyer. Rather, the lawyer must also be able to work within 
and improve the legal system and contribute to society. The next three 
qualities contribute to those ends. 
738 SOUTH TEXAS LAW REVIEW [Vol. 43:735 
PROFESSIONALISM AND COMMITMENT 
The legal profession in any country can continue as an effective 
and respected entity to serve the public only if it establishes and 
maintains a set of professional expectations and standards to which 
the members of the profession adhere. A necessary element of 
professionalism is an established and enforced code of ethics or 
professional responsibility. One function of legal education is to help 
new lawyers become accustomed to and committed to honoring the 
code of ethics of the profession. 
Adhering to minimal rules of ethics is not enough for good 
attorneys. They also must be committed to improving the profession. 
That means treating one another with civility and respect. It also 
means contributing to professional organizations, promoting good 
legal education, and participating in educating the public about the 
nature of the law and the importance of the rule of law. 
Successfully developing a sense of professionalism and 
commitment to the profession in new lawyers requires an 
acculturation while in law school. More than that, it requires an 
openness to continue the process of understanding and participating 
in the profession after law school. 
A SENSE OF JUSTICE 
Central to the legal profession is the trust any society places in it 
to see to the promotion of justice within the society. Any good lawyer 
must take seriously the responsibility that trust imposes on the 
profession. A lawyer must, therefore, contribute to a more just society 
and help improve the administration of justice. A good lawyer must 
not only seek justice for individual clients, but also be concerned 
about the structure and success of the legal system in advancing the 
highest goals of fairness, efficiency, equality, and human rights. 
No well-educated lawyer should enter the profession without a 
sensitivity and commitment to these ideals. Beyond a personal 
commitment, a good lawyer should also be prepared to engage non-
lawyers in a discussion of the goals of the law and the commitment to 
improving society's success in promoting those high ideals. 
Law schools are expected to bring students into the profession. 
Unlike medicine, law does not have a post-professional degree 
residency training program. Much of the professionalism in medicine 
can be provided through the residency program after medical school. 
There is no such period in the United States, so that obligation has 
2002] THE MEANING OF QUALITY 739 
increasingly fallen to law schools. 
ABILITY TO LEARN 
It is commonly said that the law is a learned profession. Even 
more importantly, it is a "learning" profession. No matter how 
effective a law school is, it can only begin the process of legal 
education because no attorney has learned the law at the time of 
graduation. The law, the legal system, and the needs of society and 
clients will change dramatically throughout the many years of a 
lawyer's career. The lawyer must be able to change and to be flexible 
and to deal with the many changes during the time the lawyer is 
practicing. In addition, as an attorney represents new clients, the areas 
of the law the attorney must understand increase. The ability to learn 
new legal principles and to stay abreast of current developments 
through self-learning is an essential element for the competent 
attorney. 
A good attorney must have a variety of techniques for additional 
education throughout the attorney's career. Continuing legal 
education programs, discussions with colleagues, careful reading, bar 
association work, and work with other professionals are examples of 
the kinds of educational opportunities a good attorney must take 
advantage of and be prepared to use. Perhaps more important than 
the techniques of legal research and scholarship that any good 
attorney must have is the desire to continue to learn and a continuing 
fascination with new legal developments. 
Law schools can do a great deal to engender the expectation in 
their students that legal education will be a lifetime undertaking. The 
failure to emphasize this to lawyers threatens even the most 
competent new graduate with rapid obsolescence. 
The magnitude of the job of legal education is apparent by 
considering these five qualities of effective lawyers: technical 
competence, creative problem solving, professionalism and 
commitment, a sense of justice, and the ability to learn. Helping 
students become proficient at any one of these five would be an 
enormous undertaking for programs that last usually only three or 
four years. Trying to accomplish all five simultaneously is somewhat 
overwhelming. 
As the critics of legal education have pointed out, law schools do 
not do an excellent job in completing all of the tasks of instruction 
that are set out for it in educating fine lawyers. Inevitably, legal 
education faces trade-offs between emphasizing any one of these 
740 SOUTH TEXAS LAW REVIEW [Vol. 43:735 
areas to the exclusion of others. Some balance in selecting the areas of 
study for students is, of course, essential. Wonderfully technically 
competent lawyers who are not problem-solvers or committed to 
professionalism are technocrats who can do clients as much harm as 
good. Law schools must seek to educate much more complete 
professionals. 
The enormity of the task of educating good lawyers also 
emphasizes the fact that the legal profession and legal education 
should hold law schools to high standards. We should not accept legal 
education that is slipshod, that cuts corners, or that seeks to prepare 
students only for the first few months or years of practice. We should 
insist that law schools are adequately staffed with excellent faculty, 
that library resources are generous, that classrooms are rigorous and 
engaging, and that high standards are expected from law students 
from the minute they begin law school and thereby become part of 
legal profession. 
Lawyers of high quality can improve the quality of justice in a 
society, provide excellent service to individual clients, improve the 
efficiency of an economy, and contribute to the welfare of the society. 
To serve these purposes, however, a lawyer must be well educated. 
Through high-quality legal education law schools contribute to the 
improvement of the legal profession and society. 


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Law Review, California Western

California Western Law Review 
Volume 39 Number 2 Article 1 
2003 
Table of Contents 
California Western Law Review 
Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarlycommons.law.cwsl.edu/cwlr 
Recommended Citation 
Law Review, California Western (2003) "Table of Contents," California Western Law Review: Vol. 39 : No. 2 
, Article 1. 
Available at: https://scholarlycommons.law.cwsl.edu/cwlr/vol39/iss2/1 
This Prefatory Matter is brought to you for free and open access by CWSL Scholarly Commons. It has been 
accepted for inclusion in California Western Law Review by an authorized editor of CWSL Scholarly Commons. For 
more information, please contact alm@cwsl.edu. 
CALIFORNIA WESTERN LAW REVIEW
VOLUME 39 SPRING 2003 NUMBER 2
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ARTICLES
A Primer on Enron: Lessons From A Perfect Storm of Financial
Reporting, Corporate Governance and Ethical Culture Failures
M arianne M . Jennings ......................................................................... 163
To Ban or Not to Ban an American Taliban? Revocation
of Citizenship & Statelessness in a Statecentric System
J.M . Sp ecta r ......................................................................................... 263
ESSAY
Come the Revolution: Are We Finally Ready for Universal
Health Insurance?
Susan A dler C hannick .......................................................................... 303
COMMENTS
New York's "Unfortunate Event" Test: Its Application
Prior to the Events of 9/11
Jon A . B aum unk ................................................................................... 323
Architectural Barriers Under the ADA: An Answer to
the Judiciary's Struggle with Technical Non-Compliance
D. Russell Hymas and Brett R. Parkinson ........................................... 349
Is the War on Terrorism Compromising Civil Liberties?
A Discussion of Hamdi and Padilla
A lejandra Rodriguez ........................................................................... 379
Will The Privacy Act of 1974 Still Hold up in 2004? How
Advancing Technology Has Created a Need for Change
in the "System Of Records" Analysis
Julianne M . Sullivan ............................................................................. 395
1
Law Review: Table of Contents
Published by CWSL Scholarly Commons, 2002
2California Western Law Review, Vol. 39 [2002], No. 2, Art. 1
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Baumunk, Jon A.

New York\u27s  Unfortunate Event  Test: Its Application Prior to the Events of 9/11

Hymas, D. Russell

Parkinson, Brett R.

Architectural Barriers Under the ADA: An Answer to the Judiciary\u27s Struggle with Technical Non-Compliance

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Iraq War: Anticipatory Self-Defense or Unlawful Unilateralism?

The Meaning of Quality

Globalization and Development--Free Trade, Foreign Aid, Investment and the Rule of Law

Abstinence Breeds Contempt: Why the U.S. Policy on Foreign Assistance for Family Planning is Cause for Concern

Avena & Other Mexican Nationals: The Litmus for LaGrand & the Future of Consular Rights in the United States

Parens Patri[archy]: Adoption, Eugenics, and Same-Sex Couples

The Law of Causation in Actions Involving Third-Party Assaults When the Landowner Negligently Fails to Hire Security Guards: A Critical Examination of Saelzler v. Advanced Group 400

Table of Contents

New York\u27s Unfortunate Event Test: Its Application Prior to the Events of 9/11

Architectural Barriers Under the ADA: An Answer to the Judiciary\u27s Struggle with Technical Non-Compliance

2,052

2,208