Last week I was pleased to find out I had been accepted into Cumberland School of Law at Samford University in Birmingham. I was also asked to apply for their fellows program, which focuses on fostering a service-oriented mentality in future lawyers. The application was fairly straight-forward, I simply had to write a 500-word essay. The topic: “How do you view law as an avenue for service.” Here is what I came up with.
Idealism is too often scoffed at as the naive mindset of a foolish generation. Idealists ignore the grey world we live in for a more neat black and white landscape. They dream in broad strokes and refuse to compromise their principles when the going gets tough. While idealism can push people towards slacktivism that feels good but accomplishes little, I think it is also the most essential attribute of a public servant.
On its own, idealism accomplishes little, but when we take grand ideas and apply realistic actions, the incremental progress we make can have a sweeping impact on our society. It is one thing to desire the abolishment of global human trafficking. It is another thing entirely to get up every morning and go to work for International Justice Mission working on trafficking cases alongside local governments, but this is where true service is accomplished in the legal system. The practice of law allows us to engage in a realistic idealism that maintains our broad goals of serving humanity on a global scale, but recognizes the necessity of serving real people on an individual basis. Essentially, law is the perfect avenue for service because it provides an outlet for idealism while empowering us to make a tangible difference.
Within each case, we are given an opportunity to serve the greater good. John Locke said that “the end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom.” Like a pebble dropped in a lake that sends ripples coursing across the water’s surface, laws have the ability to influence the lives of everyone who is subject to them. When the parents of 20 schoolchildren in Kansas filed their case against the Board of Education of Topeka, they could not have foreseen that three years later the Supreme Court would use it to conclude that “separate but equal” no longer had a place in public education. Regardless, Brown vs. Board of Education would serve to initiate the desegregation of public schools across the U.S., and achieve a victory beyond the individual circumstances of the original case. The idealism of the civil rights movement was made manifest in the groundwork performed by those who were willing to serve a cause they believed in. In this case and countless others, the practice of law accomplishes the purpose of serving many by serving the few.
If our grand ideas of justice are arrows in a quiver, law is the bow that enables us to put them to good use. The practice of law gives us the power to serve the public at large by protecting our greatest ideals: those of justice and equality, freedom and dignity. When we bring these grand, idealistic notions to mundane, daily tasks, we are able to serve the public and have the greatest possible impact. This collision of idealism and realistic action makes law the perfect avenue for serving, and it is the precise reason I have embarked to enter this most noble profession.
The Last Word 