What Could Have Been and What Is

I had the sudden need to look through old files in my cabinet.

A very thin one, labeled, "St. John's" referred to three pieces of paper. Every time I pull this one out, first saved in 2006, I still get a twinge of. . .not anger exactly, but something most intense.

Perhaps it is the realization that my future was often in the hands of strangers, as is true of all of us. And strangers, sometimes, with a rather cavalier attitude about the outcome they are potentially orchestrating from their ivory towers.  In this case, the conductors were the professorial management of the place I attended law school. 

I graduated from Fordham magna cum laude, in curse honorum, (I did an undergraduate thesis). That means I had either an A or B+ in my classes. But when I got to St. John's of the 1970's, the grading system was unlike any of the corresponding schools, a curve that meant, upon graduation, we had one person cum laude with a B+ and the rest were Bs and C+s and Cs.  To be a C+ was to be in the top one third of the class.  I was in the top one third. Great, right? 

Not so fast. I couldn't get in the door of any significant law office once I passed the Bar. I was lucky to get an internship with an OTB (Off Track Betting) character on the Grand Concourse in an apartment building that probably wasn't zoned for law offices. One guy's office was in the living room. The other, my guy, was in the bedroom. 

My first job wasn't even a legal one. It was with a city public relations agency that had little or no work. I wasn't looking a gift horse in the mouth. Then a lawyer I met in the agency helped me get a job in the appeals section of the City.  I lost that job due to internecine battles over which I had no control, but they had the decency to say, officially, that it was because I wasn't "civil service".  Then I managed, through an aunt and the son of the man who used to own our local hardware store, to get a job with a man whose closet like office was in Manhattan (that was good), but whose practice and personality was my first exposure to the reality of the practice of law--reality never proposed or even acknowledged in the halls of the law school.

When I moved to Los Angeles, I found jobs first as a secretary, then after passing the Bar in California, I finally was able to find a niche at the State Bar, for a pretty good run of twenty-five years.  I had put the irritation I felt about St. John's grading policy that had nearly crippled my chances at making a career behind me, except the small rebellion of never contributing to the coffers.

I had been out of law school for fifteen years when I received the alumni magazine and found this note from one of my former professors. St. John's had relented and finally changed its grading system to be one commensurate with the other law schools in the area, including, and I found their comparison amusing, Harvard. Harvard in those days at least was a first tier school; when I went to St. John's it was a second or third tier one--perhaps undeservedly I always felt, because the education itself was certainly as meaningful, better even because the Bar pass rate was high.

 

 

It was good, indeed, that the school had come to its senses, but the issue I took with the message was two fold, the smug assumption that what St. John's had done, in contrast say to that first tier school Harvard, was far superior and that the change was a reluctant but not ultimately significant to any living beings.ni

I put the message away for over 12 years until in 2006, when I received one of those routine fundraising letters but from the alumni association. I had by then worked my way through the ranks of the prosecutorial staff of the Office of the Chief Trial Counsel. I was managing teams of lawyer and support staff. I had done this, in my view, in spite of, not because of St. John's, and I finally had to unburden my feelings.

Here is what I wrote:

Re:  Your request for donations

Gentlemen:

I have long put off writing this letter, pending a time when I was no longer angry or resentful.  I suppose this is the time, in the waning years of my career as an Assistant Chief Trial Counsel for the State Bar of California's disciplinary and regulation arm. . .At this stage, the letter is merely an overdue explanation for the fact that St. John's has never received a donation from me.

In 1994, the Law School Alumni magazine published a "Message on Grading Policy" by one of my former professors Robert Parella.  He explained the changes in a long standing grading policy which, despite the trends in other law school, including more prestigious ones than St. John's. . .had persisted to the disadvantage of St. John's graduates in the job market.  This was done in the purported interest of the integrity of its own system. I was one of those students whose top one third C plus average, denominated a "quite good average" by Professor Parella, assured that any advancement I made was solely on my own steam.

The one interview I received at a large firm, through the intercession of a family friend, was at the hands of a partner who assured me that "they" found that individuals with my grade point average were not of their caliber.  My top one third status was irrelevant.  My 3.8 undergraduate honors graduation. . .was even more so. No one wanted to hear about the integrity, accuracy and reasonable consistency of the St. John system.  There was also the burden of the idiocy of true/false examinations in the area of law which by its nature is ambiguous--allowing arguments on both sides always.

I managed.  I worked for the City of New York briefly in an appeal unit.  I worked for a single practitioner in the city and was introduced to the reality of practice that neither St. John's nor any other law school, cloaking itself primarily in philosophic and Socratic safety, acknowledged.  I moved to California and worked as a secretary/law clerk for another disciplinary respondent waiting to happen. . .until I passed its bar in 1983.  Then, in 1986, I found my life's work. . .I proved myself as a litigator.  I have been a teacher of the first disciplinary "Ethics School" in the country since 1993.  I now run the school in addition to my heading one of three trial units and being part of the management team of the office. I speak at Bar functions and at law schools, for example, Pepperdine. It is my hope to be a professor of ethics law in one of the local universities when I retire. 

However, the universities do ask for transcripts and mine will be difficult to overcome, notwithstanding my otherwise overwhelming credentials.  I may have to give them Professor Parella's message from 1994 in the hope that it will dispel the impression that I was a inadequate student, when the opposite was the case.

I do not tell you these things to brag or to whine.  I did well enough.  I do, however wonder what would have happened for me, and for many others, had the grading system. . .been like those of the other schools in 1979 when I graduated.  I also note, with some amusement, the last line in Professor Parella's message. . .when he said that the school had not yet, but still intended to convert to a 4.0 or "some such" GPA.  "We will then be in line with all the other law schools in the area, and most of this message will be of historical and transitional significance only."

I suggest that his message had no transitional significance to me or to other of my fellow graduates nor to St. John's to which we have not contributed one dime, not merely because of the grading policy, but because of the arrogance it bespoke and the damage it did to talented individuals who deserved better from those who molded us.


So much has happened since I left law school, since the Bar, and now perhaps indeed it has no meaning, or the struggle to get "somewhere" was ultimately nothing more than making enough money to survive to now, my 60th year and beyond if that time is given to me by God.

I have decided to tear up the original documents and leave only this blog piece to memorialize what was once so very, very important and even hurtful to me. 

On the good side, it has caused me to think of the impact I have on others, with passing word and with pronouncements, if it comes to that.  I have a story about what might have been a failure in that regard, one of many probably. Maybe I will tell it as I let go of more and more in these pages.