For the first time since 2004, this fall, I will not teach our required 1L course, Lawyering: Problem-Solving and Dispute Resolution.

We had several sections each year and so I had a chance to impart my views about lawyering to a substantial part of our class.  I felt passionate about the value of good lawyering and I hoped that students leave would my class with some of my vision and values.

Every year, for the first day of class in the fall semester, we would read Stephen D. Easton, My Last Lecture: Unsolicited Advice for Future and Current Lawyers, 56 S.C. L. REV. 229 (2004).  I LOVE that article, which expresses really honest, practical advice with a good spirit.

Recently, I was asked to write an article to celebrate my retirement with a piece collecting my ideas and illustrating that I am still very much a part of the Missouri CSDR family.

So I drafted My Last Lecture: More Unsolicited Advice for Future and Current Lawyers, which will appear next year in our Journal of Dispute Resolution.  I really kinda like it.

Actually, I think of it as my first lecture – what we would discuss on the first day of class – not my last.  And, in fact, it won’t be my last because I am teaching half-time this year and will continue to give presentations at conferences, symposia, CLE programs etc.

I just posted the draft on SSRN and I think many Indisputably readers would share my sentiments and want to assign it to your classes this year.

I will still have a chance to add to and revise the article, so if you have any suggestions (especially if you might assign this in the future and want me to include things to urge your students), please let me know by September 14.

You never write. You never call.