What Will Be Your Legacy?

I've been interested in the idea of legacy for a long time, probably since I first read Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

The topic became a lot more concrete and real to me a few months ago when my dad passed away. As I have dealt with my own grief over his loss and tried to help my mom do the same, I have also been afforded a different view of my father. I got to see the parts of his life that didn't belong to me, my brother, or my mother, but that he shared with the world through his work.

My dad was a teacher for 30 some years, most of which were spent teaching biology in the same community college that he first attended as a student years before. In the days leading up to his funeral and in the weeks and months that haved passed since, I've had the bittersweet experience of learning about all of the students whose lives my dad touched. It's been by turns moving, inspiring, and a bit melancholy, to be perfectly honest.

Most of all I've felt proud.

In our work - as lawyers, bar association executives or what have you - it is unfortunately easy to be consumed by the daily minutiae of our jobs, to the detriment of taking a longer, broader view of the impact our lives and careers make. We have to pay mortgages, answer client calls, and attend to the urgencies of the moment -- these things demand our attention. But they are not all that is worth our attention.

Thinking about one's legacy is like listening to a quiet voice from far away: when we are still we can hear it, but it is easily drowned out by ringing phones and chirping emails.

A legacy is not made in the thinking, however, it is made in the doing. It doesn't benefit from excess rumination, just as bread is not improved by baking it past done. Rather, we each forge our own legacy every day with every small, seemingly mundane thing we do. Our days are our legacies in the making, moment by moment.

The question is therefore not whether one should attend to leaving a legacy, but rather is one proud of the legacy being created already?

Two articles in the New York Times today gave two different looks at legacy: the first was about the death of George Steinbrenner, the volcanic owner of my beloved New York Yankees. He left behind a legacy as a ball club owner with an unyielding will to win, perhaps at the expense of being loved, or even liked by many of those around him.

The other was an article about how students are using Facebook to reconnect with influential teachers from their youth. 20, 30 or more years later students are finding their former teachers and sharing how important these teachers were in helping the students find their way.

Another interesting contrast: Steve Jobs is building a legacy as a genius CEO and Bill Gates is building a legacy as a philanthropist.

My point here is not that we ought to judge the relative merits of other peoples' legacies but instead make sure our own are in fine working order.

In the law we have a unique opportunity to forge enduring legacies. Whether you want to be remembered as a guardian of liberty and justice or as a caring counsellor-at-law who helped his clients during life's dark moments, the opportunity is there. Leave a legacy for razor insight, quick wit or memorable kindness -- it's up to you.

It's easy to think reductively about legacy and glibly wave it off as something that will happen after you are dead and gone and therefore unimportant. Legacy doesn't pay the bills.

From the longer, broader view, though, I'm not sure there is anything that is more important for us as lawyers and as people.

One of the great things about working in the law, is that we are not atomized cells apart (though sometimes it may feel like it). We are part of a broader community within the law, connected to our clients, to our colleagues at bar, and our institutions. We are also increasingly part of voluntary communities of like-minded souls brought together by the internet in ways never before possible.

One legal community I am connected to is my bar association, which happily means that occasionally I get to see or hear things that are truly inspiring about our profession and the people in it. My work puts me into contact with people I otherwise likely wouldn't, whether they are judges, big firm managing partners, or solo practitioners fresh out of law school. I have by turns been inspired by all three and many others.

Wherever and however you find your communities in the law, whether through bar associations or Twitter, through your law partners or your clients, through volunteer committee work or informal happy hours -- these communities are the places where your legacy will ultimately rest.

I hope that both you and I are building legacies that will make our communities and families proud.