Mission Statement & Values

The first core value is Service. The value of service means we are committed to using our skills, knowledge, and leadership to benefit our communities, people in need, the legal profession, and the administration of justice. True servant leadership, to which we all should all aspire, means always being willing to help; putting others’ needs before our own; seeking opportunities to improve the profession; acting as a role model to others; and being active in our community.

It should not surprise you that President Lincoln viewed himself as a servant, first and foremost. In an August 1863 letter sent to a friend in Springfield, Illinois, in which Lincoln defended the Emancipation Proclamation, he wrote: “I freely acknowledge myself the servant of the people, according to the bond of service—the United States Constitution, and that, as such, I am responsible to them.” He exhibited servant leadership by putting the interests of his country before his own, leading to the two great achievements of his Presidency: preserving the Union and abolishing slavery. And he knew that those who obtained positions of leadership, whether politicians or lawyers, were susceptible to corruption: “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”

We define Excellence as being skilled in our craft, holding ourselves to the highest standards of performance and behavior at all times, and being self-driven toward continuous learning and improvement in our profession. What does that look like, exactly? Well, it means always striving for professional growth. Even if you succeed at something, you should always consider how you can improve and be even better the next time. It means taking pride in all aspects of your work, even those parts that are tedious or that we might be tempted to avoid or do only halfway. And it means offering solutions rather than complaints. As Teddy Roosevelt said in his famous “Man in the Arena” speech, “it is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.” Don’t be the cynic who sits on the sidelines and criticizes others; be willing to be the one who takes risks, and in so doing, inspires others.

Although he died almost 60 years before that speech was given, we have no greater example of the “Man in the Arena” than our namesake, President Abraham Lincoln. He had his share of critics; indeed, he is the only president whose election directly resulted in an entire region of our country seceding from the Union. But through the unyielding courage of his convictions, Lincoln led our nation through its greatest trial. Lincoln said it simply: “I do the very best I know how - the very best I can; and I mean to keep on doing so until the end.” Would we all follow his example.

We define Resilience as pushing forward and succeeding despite uncontrollable circumstances, recovering from setbacks and viewing them as challenges rather than obstacles, and having a growth mindset. Law school presents a whole new set of challenges. As a law student, you are going to fail at some point over the next three or four years. Hopefully, you won’t literally fail, but you certainly will make mistakes and perform, as some point, in a way that is not up to the standards you set and expect for yourself. It happened to all of us in law school, and it will happen to you.

The question is not whether you will fail, but what will you do about it when you do? Getting a bad grade on an assignment or exam in law school may seem like the end of the world in the moment, but it is nothing compared to failing a client who has trusted you with the most important thing in his or her life. Our goal here at LMU Law is to challenge you and also support you, so you learn how to bounce back from failures and be stronger than before.

You will see in our definition of resilience that we include having a growth mindset. “Growth mindset” is a term originated by Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck. Our “mindset” is our internalized theory of intelligence.  Someone with a growth mindset believes that intelligence and abilities can develop and grow with effort. More specifically, failure is not something to fear – much less a sign of one’s lack of intelligence or abilities – but rather an opportunity for learning and growth.

Abraham Lincoln probably never heard the term “growth mindset,” but he definitely exhibited resilience. Here is just a short list of President Lincoln’s failures:

• He was defeated for Illinois state legislator in 1832.
• His business failed in 1833.
• His sweetheart died in 1835, and he had a nervous breakdown in 1836.
• He lost his run for Speaker of the Illinois House in 1838.
• He as defeated for the nomination for Congress in 1843.
• He was elected to Congress in 1846, but served only one term, because his party did not renominate him in 1848.
• He lost his bid to become a U.S. Senator in 1854.
• He ran for Vice President of the United States in 1856 and lost.
• He again ran for the U.S. Senate in 1858 and lost yet again (this was the election with the famous Lincoln/Douglas debates).

Of course, Lincoln’s great electoral success – being elected the 16th President of the United States in 1860, the first from his party to be elected President – was immediately followed by the secession of the Southern states and the bloodiest conflict that our country has ever known. But one can easily surmise that Lincoln was able to lead our country through that conflict, reunite the country, and bring about the end of slavery because, not in spite of, of all the failures he had faced earlier in his life.

Whether you are just starting out in law school, are almost halfway through, or are facing your last year with the bar exam on the horizon, one of the best pieces of advice I can give you is these words of Lincoln: “My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.”

We define Integrity as representing ourselves and our clients with uncompromisingly moral, ethical, and civil behavior, including in our communications and interactions with others, and developing reputations for being honest in our word and fair in our actions. To me, integrity was best described by the author C.S. Lewis – it is doing the right thing, even when no one else is watching.

Integrity means everything to a lawyer. We don’t build or design houses, cook gourmet meals, or produce works of art. We write, argue, and negotiate for a living. Our effectiveness depends completely on others’ willingness to trust us. Can those people (clients, the court, your partners, opposing counsel, your family and friends) rely on your word? Do you do what you say you are going to do and hold yourself accountable, even when – especially when – it might make things more difficult for you? It also is an exacting standard. You can do the right thing nine times out of ten, but one wrong choice can do enormous damage to your reputation.

The fact that lawyers generally do not have a great reputation for honesty is both unfortunate and ironic, given that character and fitness review is an essential part of the bar application process. Bar admissions offices in each state rely on law schools to be the gatekeepers of the profession, only admitting those students whom the law school believes to have the character and fitness to practice law. That is why it is so important that prospective and current law students disclose everything to the law school that they will be disclosing in their bar application. A graduate’s bar application and the information we submit on the graduate’s behalf to the bar admissions office need to match up. When they don’t, and a graduate who has worked hard, passed the bar exam, and thought he or she would be starting a legal career has to wait to see if they will be admitted – well, trust me, that is not a situation you want to be in.

None of our core values is more closely associated with President Lincoln than integrity. The man’s nickname was “Honest Abe”! Nothing was more important to Lincoln, as both a lawyer and a politician, as cultivating and maintaining his reputation for honesty. Even his political opponents and enemies acknowledged Lincoln’s integrity. Stephen Douglas, who defeated Lincoln in the campaign for U.S. Senate from Illinois in 1858, said, upon finding out Lincoln was running against him: “I shall have my hands full…. He is as honest as he is shrewd, and if I beat him my victory will be hardly won.”

I don’t think anything I write on the topic of integrity can improve upon Lincoln’s “Notes for a Law Lecture,” written in July 1850. This is a draft of a speech from Lincoln to younger members of the Illinois bar during the time in his career when he was most active as an attorney riding circuit. He closed his remarks by indicating the need for integrity, first and foremost:

“There is a vague popular belief that lawyers are necessarily dishonest. I say vague, because when we consider to what extent confidence and honors are reposed in and conferred upon lawyers by the people, it appears improbable that their impression of dishonesty is very distinct and vivid. Yet the impression is common, almost universal. Let no young man choosing the law for a calling for a moment yield to the popular belief—resolve to be honest at all events; and if in your own judgment you cannot be an honest lawyer, resolve to be honest without being a lawyer. Choose some other occupation, rather than one in the choosing of which you do, in advance, consent to be a knave.”

At LMU Law, we define Empathy as listening to and seeking to understand those whom we represent and with whom we interact; consciously guarding ourselves against biases that may impact our relationships with clients and collaborators; and seeking out opportunities for compassion. Empathy is generally defined as being aware of, and understanding, the feelings of another. Building on my message above regarding the presidential election, it is not hard to see why empathy is such an important skill to cultivate. The sixth and final value, which I’ll discuss in a couple of weeks, is self-awareness. Empathy is its counter-balance; it is awareness of others.

For lawyers, empathy is particularly crucial. Lawyers are, at our core, problem solvers. How can you expect to build a strategy to properly advise your client about his or her case if you cannot understand where he or she is coming from? How can you develop an effective argument for a judge or jury if you cannot put yourself in their position and predict how your argument will be received? How can you engage in the back-and-forth of litigation or negotiation with opposing counsel without anticipating what the other side is going to do in response to your next move? The short answer to all these questions is, you can’t – or rather, maybe you can, but not for long. A lawyer who lacks empathy is an ineffective lawyer.

Empathy is sometimes confused, wrongly, for “softness” – that is, tolerating or enabling another’s bad behavior. To be clear, you don’t have to agree with someone’s words or actions in order to empathize with them. But it is going to be very difficult for you to work with them to remediate that behavior, which may be harmful to you or to others, without first putting yourself in the other person’s shoes.

I have learned a lot of lessons about leadership in the last 4+ years as your dean, but probably the one that stands out the most is that an effective leader always thinks ahead about how his or decision, and the process taken to reach that decision, will be received by others. The effective leader does more anticipating and less reacting. As I reach decisions or help others do so, I’m constantly considering: How will different faculty and staff members react? Which students are impacted by this decision, and how will they respond? What about the impact outside the law school – the University, our alumni, the legal community? Some of my hardest days as dean have been ones where I had failed to go through that analysis, or when I did so, but my predictions were wrong or incomplete.

President Lincoln rose to the challenge of leadership during the most divisive time in our country’s history because he had the core value of empathy. As historian Doris Kearns Goodwin wrote in her book Team of Rivals, and as discussed at length in this article, Lincoln “possessed extraordinary empathy — the gift or curse of putting himself in the place of another, to experience what they were feeling, to understand their motives and desires… His sensibilities were not only acute, they were raw.” One of the reasons Lincoln was so successful politically was that he had “the power to forecast with uncanny accuracy what his opponents were likely to do.” And he was able to take former and potential political enemies and turn them into allies. Team of Rivals is filled with examples of Lincoln promoting those who had opposed him politically, or building confidence among his subordinates by encouraging them to disagree with him when they felt it was in the interest of the country to do so.

Perhaps it was Lincoln’s time as a lawyer that gave him the empathy necessary to lead our country through the Civil War, saving the Union and ending slavery. As much as sometimes feels otherwise, the stakes for us today are not as high as they were for President Lincoln. But in thinking about the goals that are important to you as you embark on your legal career, know that you are unlikely to achieve them without cultivating the core value of empathy.

As I have worked more closely with our bar success program in the last year, I have seen that a key distinction between those students who pass the bar exam on the first try and those who do not – and particularly among those who “outperform” their other metrics to pass the exam – is the ability to properly self-assess their work. Our professors can create and administer exams that precisely match the format of the bar exam exactly, and then provide both general and specific feedback to each individual student. But if the students themselves do not or cannot properly assess where they went wrong and make appropriate changes, they will not see improvement in their academic performance.

The biggest problem with self-awareness, of course, is that those who lack it aren’t self-aware enough to realize they don’t have it! But the good news is that it is a skill and value that can be improved. Your ability to develop your emotional intelligence and improve your self-awareness will impact your success in law school, the bar exam, and practice more than any doctrine or “hard” skills we teach you here at LMU.

President Lincoln was such an effective leader, in part, because he was self-aware. I mentioned in the last message how Doris Kearns Goodwin, in Team of Rivals, described Lincoln’s empathy. She also writes about his self-awareness. Lincoln was known to be melancholy and sometimes morose, but Goodwin describes his “uncanny understanding of his shifting moods, a profound self-awareness that enabled him to find constructive ways to alleviate stress and sadness.” Knowing he was partial to bouts of depression, he would make sure to engage in activities that renewed and sustained him, such as attending the theater. Aware that he had a temper, he would often fire off an angry letter to a political rival or one of the Union generals who had upset him, only to seal the letter in an envelope and place it in a drawer, leaving it unsent.