Welcome to the Legal Profession

I was honored and privileged to welcome the first-year class at the Seattle University School of Law to the legal profession on August 22, 2019. What follows is the transcript of my presentation to the very impressive, diverse, and committed students in that class. I look forward to seeing many of them in my Patent Law class in the years to come.

Good afternoon and welcome! Thank you, Dean Clark for that wonderful introduction.

It’s a little awkward to not just follow such a wonderfully inspiring speaker as Provost Martin, but to also recognize that I am the last person standing between you and lunch. With that in mind, I will keep these comments short.

Let me add my congratulations to you for starting what I hope and expect will be a wonderful new journey. I realize that “starting” is probably not the right word as you began this journey many months, or perhaps years ago, as you made the challenging decision to apply to law school, considered the opportunity costs of attending law school—something not to be taken lightly given the significant financial burden that many of you are taking on in attending law school—and went through the very rigorous process of researching schools, taking the LSATs, applying to schools, and all the other sacrifices you made to be where you are today. So, let me just congratulate you instead on completing the first part of the journey towards becoming an attorney and welcome you to the next stage of that voyage.

I’ve was asked to talk to you about a couple of things that you should keep in mind as you begin law school: what it means to be a professional and the fact that you are starting to develop your professional reputations. Honestly, I do not feel qualified to speak to you about those topics. Not because those aren’t important topics, but because many, if not all, of you are already professionals and your experiences in law school and as lawyers are going to be unique to you. Thus, my speaking to you about what it means to be a professional in the abstract doesn’t seem like the best use of your time. I would thus like to take this opportunity to suggest three things to keep in mind as you make this sometimes frustrating and sometimes exhilarating journey through law school.

·        First, keep an open mind and don’t be afraid to challenge the orthodoxy.

·        Second, you are joining a very small legal community. Embrace that fact.

·        Third, find something in the law to be passionate about.

A.       Keep an Open Mind and Don’t be Afraid to Challenge the Orthodoxy

Many of you may not realize or appreciate how diverse a class you are. A third of you are not Washington state residents. Three-quarters of you are not from Seattle. More than 60% of your class are women, and 40% of you are students of color. More importantly, you are coming into law school with a diversity of life experiences, beliefs, passions, and backgrounds that is unlike most other graduate experiences.

There were only nine students in the mathematics program in my Ph.D. class at Caltech, and every single one of us had three or four years of undergraduate mathematics under our belt. None of recoiled in horror when we heard the words “linear algebra” or “second order differential equations.” I suspect the same is true for a graduate program in Philosophy, Art History, Engineering, on in Med School (although I suspect the words “linear algebra” and “second order differential equations” may not be as welcome in those first two programs). Law school is different and wonderful because it is meant to reflect, and does reflect, the diversity in society by attracting persons with training, expertise, and interests in a vast variety of endeavors.

Revel in this diversity. It is hard to miss references in Above the Law to the “Trump Bump” that led to a jump in law school enrollment following President Trump’s election in 2016. And it is undoubtedly the case that passions—especially when it comes to politics and public policy—are running high. I was lucky that when I attended law school the most heated political debate was whether Al Gore and George W. Bush were clones of one another (they were not) and whether the only true candidate was Ralph Nader (he was not). It does not matter where you are on the political spectrum and how you feel about President Trump, there is no questioning that the choices and differences today are far starker than they were a few years ago.

It will be easy, and almost comfortable, under these circumstances to not engage with your classmates who hold opinions that differ from yours. Don’t take that easy way out. Engage with them. Talk to them with an open mind. You may learn something new, and you may teach them something new. Engage with your classmates, the other students, and your professors, with an open mind because it may well be the last time you are part of such a diverse and intriguing group of people. I am not suggesting it will always be comfortable or easy, but given the choice between engaging with one of your classmates on a controversial topic or dismissing them as a “know nothing,” if possible, chose engagement. I suspect that not all those experiences will be positive, but a surprising number of them will be.

In terms of challenging orthodoxy, as many of you probably know, the legal profession is one of the least, if not the least, diverse professions in the country. Earlier I mentioned that more than 60% of your class are women and 40% of you are students of color. Unfortunately, those percentages are not even close to being reflected in the partnership rolls of most large law firms in the country, and indeed in Seattle. Many, many people, including Justice Yu who you will hear from later today, have worked tireless to try and address these inequities, but there is a lot of work still left to be done.

As daunting as it may sound, you can make a difference and can start making that difference today. Get involved with organizations that have as their mission improving diversity in the bar and the bench. Whether that be the student chapter of the Asian Bar Association of Washington, the Loren Miller Bar Association, the King County Bar Association, or a variety of minority and specialty bars, get involved and make your voice heard. Additionally, as scary as it sounds, ask hard questions. Every law firm you will be interviewing with for an internship—whether in the summer of 2020 or the summer of 2021—has a whole section of their website devoted to their efforts to increase diversity. When you are interviewing with them, ask about the gender and racial make-up for their partners, and especially their equity partners. If everyone who interviews you is a straight, white, male ask why.

Meaningful change is going to be slow and difficult, and at times uncomfortable, but you will not be walking this path alone—many of us have had these difficult conversations and pushed for greater equity in the profession—and we will continue to support your efforts. But don’t wait until you graduate to push for this change. 

To misquote Mahatma Gandhi, because there doesn’t appear to be any record of him having said this: “Be the change you want to see in the world.”

B.        You are joining a very small legal community. Embrace that fact.

No introduction to the legal profession presentation is complete without the much parodied “look to your left, look to your right, in a year one of you” meme. In Seattle University, in Seattle, and in Washington state the ending of that saying is quite a bit different.

So I encourage you to look to your left, look to your right, and realize that in five years you will be asking one of your neighbors for an extension on a filing deadline, or referring a client to them, or working on a subcommittee of some bar association on an issue of vital public interest with them.

There are approximately 57,000 lawyers practicing in New York city. Washington D.C. has over 80,000 attorneys. California has 190,000 active registered attorneys. By contrast Washington state has approximately 40,000 registered, active attorneys, and there are approximately 11,000 attorneys practicing in King County, and King County has—by far—the most attorneys practicing in Washington state.

One of the true benefits of this fact is that you really do get a chance to know the other attorneys who practice in Seattle, Bellevue, Olympia, or wherever you end up practicing. Judge John Ruhl, an ex-president of the King County Bar Association, told me that while he was in private practice, one of the first things he did when he got a new case was to invite opposing counsel out for lunch just so they could get to know one another. That may not always be possible. When I was in private practice, as a patent litigator, often opposing counsel was located on the other side of the country, but Judge Ruhl’s experience is not beyond the pale for many of you.

The downside, if you consider this a downside, is that your reputation as an attorney—which will begin to form while you are still in law school—will precede you. Remember that thing about “look to your left, look to your right.” If you get a reputation in law school as a blowhard or, heaven forbid, a gunner, those neighbors will remember that five or ten years from now when you approach them for that extension or when you are hoping they will refer a client to you. Additionally, lawyers in the community will get to know you—and form opinions about your professionalism—much sooner when you practice in King County or Washington state than they would if you were in a state or a region that has a more transient population of attorneys.

When I was a first-year associate, in a law firm in Seattle, I worked on a patent litigation matter with a partner who had an unpleasant habit. Whenever he wanted to send a nasty-gram to opposing counsel, whether about a deficiency in the other side’s discovery response or about a scheduling conflict, he would have me draft the letter, make it more stringent than my initial draft, and then have me send it over my signature. I was not terribly comfortable with this, but on the other hand very few first-year associates—especially in patent cases—get to send letters to opposing counsel so I went along with that approach. After I sent, I think, my third or fourth nasty-gram, I got a call from opposing counsel who was also based in Seattle. He told me a couple of things that I remember to this day. First, he walked me through in excruciating detail the process I just described, because this was not the first case he had litigated against my supervising partner. He then said, “K.M. remember that your reputation is going to stay with you for a lot longer than you are going to work with ….” I never sent another nasty-gram after that day, not in that case or in any other case. You can, and should aspire to, practice law and be a strong advocate for your client without being offensive.

You will get a lot further by being professional and developing, where and when appropriate, a self-deprecating sense of humor than you ever will by being harsh or offensive. And in this town, it really is true that your reputation stays with you a very long time.

C.       Find something in the law to be passionate about.

One of the aphorisms when you start on a new career path is to find something to be passionate about, but make sure it’s not money or power as you will never be satisfied. I am not going to insult you by going down that road. Instead, I want to talk to you about some of the amazing things that lawyers in Seattle have done in the past, because of their passions, and to encourage you to do something similar.

In her very flattering introduction, Dean Clark did not mention a couple of things about me (because she did not know). I grew up in India and came to the States as an eighteen-year old, full-scholarship undergraduate student. That was a very long time ago, and along the way I became a U.S. citizen—having to renounce my Indian citizenship because India does not allow dual citizenship. Thus, as an immigrant from what President Trump no doubt considers a “shithole” country, I have been watching with growing alarm the rhetoric around immigration and the absolute horrors being unleashed on our Southern border.

In times like this it is important not just to be outraged, but also to have a proper historical perspective on this issue. Many commentators have said that these are unprecedented times in the hostility shown to immigrants, especially immigrants from what are not considered “white” countries. Consider whether that is true, or if we are simply seeing a reversion to the mean.

In 1875, Congress passed the Page Act which made it illegal for Chinese women to immigrate to the U.S. In introducing this bill in Congress, its sponsor—Horace F. Pace—said he was introducing it to, and I quote “end the danger of cheap Chinese labor and immoral Chinese women.” The law barred immigrants considered “undesirable.”

Seven years later, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act that provided a 10-year moratorium of Chinese labor immigration. Non-laborer Chinese could seek to immigrate with certification from the Chinese government, but because the exclusion applied to all “skilled and unskilled laborers and Chinese employed in mining,” the exclusion was effectively a blanket ban on all Chinese immigrants. The act was extended and later made permanent in 1902. In 1902, the act was widened to require that each Chinese resident already in the U.S. had to register and obtain a certificate of residence or risk being deported.

In 1924, Congress passed the Johnson-Reed Act, that included the Asian Exclusion Act and National Origins Act that had the net effect of barring immigration from all of Asia and restricting immigration from the Western Hemisphere to 165,000 persons per year. Because of the way the quotas were computed, the Johnson-Reed Act had the intended consequence of severely restricting immigration by Italians, Greeks, Poles, other Slavs, and Jews. The Johnson-Reed Act was not modified to aid the flight of Jewish refugees in the 1930s and 1940s, despite the rise of Nazi Germany. It was only after World War II ended that the quotas were adjusted to allow more Jews to immigrate to the United States, without increasing the total immigration numbers. These laws were only abrogated with the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965.

What does this have to do with finding your passion in the law? In 1886, a group of anti-Chinese Seattleites entered our Chinatown district, claiming to be health inspectors. Not surprisingly, they “found” all Chinese-occupied buildings to be unsafe and forced all Chinese-American occupants of those buildings down to the harbor, where a ship was waiting. The “inspectors” then collected several hundred dollars from each “passenger” to pay for their departure. Other Chinese were forced to the railroad to be similarly run out of the city. Unfortunately, many of the organizers of this anti-Chinese purge were attorneys.

Seattle’s then mayor Henry Yesler, Sheriff (and future governor) John McGraw, famed local Judge Thomas Burke, and then U.S. district attorney (and later state Supreme Court Justice) William Henry White realized what was happening and served the ship’s captain with a writ of habeas corpus. They also warned the railroad superintendent that he would be charged with kidnapping if he aided the mob. These leaders also recognized the need for a local bar, that instead of being simply a place to network and socialize, would have the authority to discipline attorneys who participated in the anti-Chinese actions. Thus, the Seattle Bar Association, which is now the King County Bar Association was founded.

The Bar’s very first resolution characterized the attorneys involved in the anti-Chinese activities as “pestilential agitators” who are “abandoning every useful calling” and “arraying one class against another” and by doing so are “the worst enemies of society.” Since then, the KCBA has taken many similar steps, from creating a minority scholarship program—which led to then KCBA President William H. Gates almost being removed from his Presidency by some members of the organization opposed to the scholarship—to the Neighborhood Legal Clinics and the Housing Justice Project. These are on-going programs that you, as law students, can get involved with in your first year. Consider doing so.

I suspect that you are probably thinking, what do these laws from the nineteenth century have to do with me? I am going to law school in Seattle, one of the most progressive cities in the country. What happens in 1886, stays in 1886. That may not exactly be correct.

Throughout the 1920s, 30s, and 40s, and until well into the 1960s, restrictive covenants prevented minorities—African Americans, Native Americans, Hispanics, Asian Americans, and Jews—from buying or renting houses in most neighborhoods in Seattle. Student researchers for the Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project have located nearly 500 racial restrictive covenants and deed restrictions in the King County Archives, covering tens of thousands of homes in Seattle and suburban King County.

These restrictions were not holdovers from the 1880s. In 1927, a group of white homeowners in Capitol Hill—you are currently sitting less than five blocks from Capitol Hill—began a campaign to expressly exclude any, and I quote, “Negroes, or any person or persons of the Negro blood” from ever renting or owning a property in Capitol Hill. Other campaigns in neighborhoods like Montlake, Madrona, and Queen Anne soon followed.

W.E. Boeing, the founder of Boeing, and his wife Bertha set aside vast tracts of land north of Seattle for the future communities of Richmond Beach, Richmond Heights, Innis Arden, Blue Ridge, and Shoreview. As they plotted those developments, Bill and Bertha added racial restrictive covenants to property deeds. A typical covenant for one of Boeing’s developments reads as follows:

“No property in said addition shall at any time be sold, conveyed, rented, or leased in whole or in part to any person or persons not of the White or Caucasian race. No person other than one of the White or Caucasian race shall be permitted to occupy any property in said addition of portion thereof or building thereon except a domestic servant actually employed by a person of the White or Caucasian race where the latter is an occupant of such property.”

Well into the 1960s it was very difficult for African Americans or Asian Americans to find housing outside of the Central District, International District, Rainier Valley, or Beacon Hill. In 1964, the citizens of Seattle voted down a fair housing ordinance. It was not until April 6, 1968, two days after Dr. King was killed that an “open housing ordinance was passed unanimously by the City Council, with an emergency clause making it effective immediately.”

I am not bringing this up to be a downer or to cast aspersions on Seattle. I bring this up only to remind you of the important role that you have to play in our communities and to ask you to remain vigilant and stand up to oppression and injustice wherever and whenever you see it. In a few short years you will be taking an oath in which will swear:

I will never reject, from any consideration personal to myself, the cause of the defenseless or oppressed, or delay unjustly the cause of any person.

Or to quote Peter Parker: “with great power, comes great responsibility.”

You are about to join a wonderful, sometimes scary, but always incredible profession. Have fun, do good work, and above all be passionate about justice.

Thank you!