Judge Tennille's Address To ABA Business Law Section

Article Date: Saturday, April 24, 2010

Remarks of Judge Ben Tennille before the Council

at the spring meeting of the ABA Section of Business Law

Denver, Colorado

April 24, 2010

 

When I was asked to provide some reflections based on my life and the law and told that I had ten minutes, I worried that there were concerns that I was suffering from the lawyer’s affliction known in the Judiciary as “verbal incontinence.”  Since I understand from lawyers that the treatment for that affliction is sometimes very painful, I'm going to endeavor to be brief.

 

First, let me thank you for the opportunities that you have provided to me and to the other business judges to participate in your section’s activities. From my involvement with the Task Force on Corporate Governance through my service as an advisor, I have received far more than I have given to this section. It's been a rewarding learning experience for me, and I thank you for it. I am particularly grateful to Mitchell Bach and Lee Applebaum for the leadership that they have provided through the ABA in the development of business courts across the country.

 

As I looked at my library shelves for inspiration about what to say to you today, I ran across a book edited by Marlo Thomas called "The Right Words at the Right Time."  It is a collection of stories by well known people in which each recounts words that someone spoke to them at just the right time in their lives to change their lives for the better. I decided to share with you some of the words of others that have made my journey through the law more rewarding despite the profession's ups and downs. I hope their words will provide you with some help as each of you wrestle with the pressures that you face in the profession. The words center around what I refer to as the SELFish life. In my version of the SELFish life, SELF is an acronym for service, exploration, love, and faith. The words that have helped me live a selfish life in the law have come from some expected sources and from some unexpected sources.

 

The first words I want to share with you have guided me through most of my life. They appear on this little bitty piece of paper that I've kept for almost 50 years. I found these words in the “Personal Glimpses” in Readers Digest when I was a teenager. They are a quote from Max Ehrmann’s "Desiderata" which Adlai Stevenson planned to use on his Christmas card the year he died. His Christmas card would have read, "Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all men. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the dull and ignorant; they, too, have their story. With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world."

 

I didn't know it then, but Ehrmann was not only a poet, he was a lawyer. From the bench I see more than my fair share of sham, drudgery, and broken dreams. Reminding myself daily how beautiful the world is, how elegant the universe is, puts the difficult part of what I do in perspective. Just as you cannot choose your family, judges cannot choose the parties and the witnesses that come before them. But each has their own story, and they deserve to be heard no matter how long it takes and no matter how dull their story may be. Chancellor Allen taught me that judges must speak quietly and clearly.

 

The second bit of inspiration came from another unlikely source. Many years later I was reading a story in Parade and the person being interviewed recounted meeting Mother Teresa and being given her business card. As you might imagine, her business card did not look like yours and mine. It contained only these words: “The gift of silence is prayer, the gift of prayer is faith, the gift of faith is love, the gift of love is service, the gift of service is peace.” Those simple words hold many powerful messages for lawyers. One is about faith. It doesn't matter to me what faith you follow, what matters is that you do not lose contact with and grounding in your faith. Faith does two things for lawyers. First, it keeps us humble. It never lets you forget that there is a Master of the Universe – and you are not that master. Faith reminds us of the lesson that appears on a sign in an old country grocery store in rural North Carolina. The sign behind the counter reads, "If you do what you're supposed to do, life turns out to be what it's supposed to be."

 

Faith, whatever yours may be, also dematerializes the world. It is about spirit that has no tangible form. Faith has nothing to do with material things. It doesn't appear on a balance sheet as an asset or liability, or on an income statement as revenue or expense. Faith helps us remember that the material world and the material problems that we are absorbed with on a daily basis as lawyers and judges are not the connections to the real source of energy and well-being in this world. Another of the messages on that business card is about service. As a young lawyer, I struggled with the business of the law. Billing and billable hours were not very satisfactory rewards from the profession I had chosen. Mother Teresa's business card reminds me every day that what lawyers do is serve others. That sense of service is the reward we get from this profession. If we conduct the practice of law as a service to others, we find the peace that eludes us if we only care about winning or losing trials or doing the best or the biggest deals. Recognizing my work as a lawyer as a service helped keep me in the legal profession.

 

The third source of inspiration for me was a book by Victor Frankl called "Man's Search for Meaning." Frankl was a Holocaust survivor who lived through forced labor at numerous concentration camps. He said men and women discover meaning in life in three ways – through achievement, struggling in a losing cause, and love of another human being. In his experience, love was the motivation for those who survived the concentration camps. Survivors kept the hope and the desire to one day be reunited with someone they loved. Those who lost the connections to a loved one did not hold on to life. Your connections to those you love are a far stronger lifeline than the legal profession will ever provide.

 

The fourth inspiration hangs on the wall outside my office. It is a comic strip. It is the last comic strip that Bill Watterson penned before he and Calvin and Hobbes retired. As their farewell, Calvin and Hobbes appear on a clean background on which it has snowed. They have the following exchange. "Wow, it really snowed last night. Isn't it wonderful? Everything familiar has disappeared. The world looks brand new. It's a new year, a fresh clean start. It's like having a big, white sheet of paper to draw on. A day full of possibilities." In the last frame, Calvin turns to Hobbes and says, "It's a magical world, Hobbes, old buddy, let's go exploring."

 

Few professions or jobs provide the opportunity to explore every day like the legal profession. We are blessed with a job that lets us learn something new every day. Whether we are achieving or struggling in a losing cause, we get to explore and to learn. Exploration keeps us fresh, it renews us. It's one of the benefits of the profession we should never forget or forgo. Calvin and Hobbs remind me that every day is a day meant for exploration. Every day is a day full of possibilities.

 

Finally, I found wisdom and inspiration in the place where you would expect me to find it and from the people you would expect to provide it. When I was charged with starting the North Carolina Business Court, with a clean sheet of paper to write on, I headed straight for Delaware. In one day, I got the education of a lifetime. I got to meet with Bill Allen, Jack Jacobs, Norm Veasey and Frank Balotti. I came away from that day with a clear understanding of what it meant to be a judge. What I learned is summed up by Norm Veasey's tribute to the Delaware Chancery Court on its 200th anniversary. He said that the judges on that court provided "[p]rompt and certain justice, delivered fairly, courteously, conscientiously and with extraordinary competence." I set that as the standard to which the North Carolina Business Court should aspire. Today, the Delaware Courts still set the standard to which all business courts aspire.

 

My ten minutes are up. When you go back to the office on Monday morning and you face that mound of work that accumulated while you were here this week, remember to lead a selfish life – serve, explore, love, and keep your faith. If you do, the practice of law and life will not only be more rewarding, you may well find peace amid the noise and the haste.

 

Shalom.

Judge Ben Tennille serves on the N.C. Superior Court for Complex Business Cases and previously served as a vice president on the North Carolina Bar Association’s Board of Governors. Remarks published with permission.