Motives for Legal Study
Before beginning the study of law, individuals should carefully examine their motives. To be truly successful in law, as in other professions, one must be committed to a high standard of integrity and must have an accurate assessment of one's abilities, as well as a sincere desire to serve others.

Integrity
An attorney has a duty to zealously represent clients, but there are limits to that representation. An attorney is also an officer of the court and must make decisions consistent with this responsibility as a minister of justice. To fulfill both responsibilities requires a high standard of integrity.

Many attorneys seem to think it is impossible to operate in the modern arena of American law and maintain standards of integrity. They see other attorneys who are willing to do anything to win a case, and they conclude that there is no way to compete without similar compromise. This view is reinforced by the temporary success which some compromising attorneys attain. However, when an attorney begins to compromise integrity to obtain certain ends, negative results are inevitable.

Modern legal education has contributed to the moral decline in the legal profession by presenting law as a constantly changing set of values. Consequently, students come to believe that ethical standards are determined from one's circumstances rather than a Biblical standard of morality.

[L]aw schools and law firms are moving in opposite directions. The schools should be training ethical practitioners and producing scholarship that judges, legislators, and practitioners can use. The firms should be ensuring that associates and partners practice law in an ethical manner. But many law schools-especially the so-called "elite" ones-have abandoned their proper place, by emphasizing abstract theory at the expense of practical scholarship and pedagogy. Many law firms have also abandoned their place, by pursuing profit above all else. While the schools are moving toward pure theory, the firms are moving toward pure commerce, and the middle ground-ethical practice-has been deserted by both.1

Oak Brook College is looking for students who are willing to stand for truth and justice. Attorneys who do right, regardless of circumstances, will be able to influence the nation's judicial system and direct it back to the fundamental principles upon which it was built.

Humility
The study of law involves analytical thinking and clear articulation of one's position in the face of opposition. Law students are trained to challenge and to withstand challenge. Unless the boldness and mental skills required for these aspects of legal practice are tempered with an acknowledgment that abilities and talents are gifts from God and the result of training by others, the intellectual side of the legal profession is fertile ground for pride.

The Bible clearly reveals that pride eventually results in destruction, for God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble (James 4:6; I Peter 5:5). The spirit of true humility and service is perfectly demonstrated by the Lord Jesus Christ, "Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: but made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: and being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross" (Philippians 2:6-8).

Humility is further discouraged by the media-generated glamorization of law. The media have in recent years taken courtroom drama into millions of American homes, portraying attorneys as heroes who spend their careers in the public eye, waging war on crime and injustice. This tends to give students entering law school a misguided perception of law and our judicial system, creating expectations of the excitement, recognition and wealth they have seen on television.

Because law students are taught to challenge and debate everything, they can easily become more concerned with winning arguments than with using their knowledge to serve others. Students who fall prey to intellectual pride often graduate thinking they are intellectually superior to the rest of society. One problem here is that the rest of society includes their prospective clientele, all of whom are concerned about getting competent legal assistance, and most of whom are wary of entrusting themselves to an overconfident new law school graduate.

Time and experience in the practice of law, however, often humble young lawyers, who learn to realize that genuine confidence is different than pride. Pride in attorneys does nothing to improve their reputation in the eyes of the public whom they serve. Confidence, on the other hand, gives clients the assurance that they are being represented in a competent manner.

Oak Brook College students are encouraged to remember that the legal profession is not, nor should it be, a society of the intellectual elite. Legal study has an end in view-the practice of law. The practice of law also has an end in view-service to those who need legal counsel and representation. Legal practice is merely a mental exercise apart from service to those who rely upon it for justice. Oak Brook College students are encouraged to humbly entrust their reputation and position in life to God so that they can focus on serving others.

Servant's Heart
An attorney who is a true servant will selflessly strive to give clients competent legal advice and assistance, focusing on the client's best interests. A law student who would fill this position of high esteem and trust must be ready to dedicate their life to the service of others. Legal education should encourage a servant's heart in all students, not just those interested in public interest law. Somewhere in the psychological upheaval of traditional law school, many students lose sight of the fact that, apart from public and private needs for service, lawyers have no function in society.

[Law students] learn to talk but not listen, learn to persuade but not understand, learn to revere the objective and mistrust the subjective. . . . They become part of the institution of law; they sound like it, and they look like it. They are no longer of the community but apart from it. They separate themselves from those they are to serve. But their language and costumes are not at all those of servants. Like the firms, bureaucracies and systems they often represent, they have become the masters and their constituents the servants. At every turn they seem to shrink from making themselves understood to such "ordinary persons." And, unlike scientists, for example, who resort to special languages and behavior to learn from each other and to increase knowledge, lawyers use their special languages all too often to mask and to deceive, to confound truth and not to seek it . . . .

Truly great lawyers . . . realize that lawyers best serve by clarifying, not obfuscating, by bringing people together, not separating them. . . . The great lawyers, like all great people, speak to all, not just a few. They deal not with a world divided into plaintiffs and defendants, lawyers and laymen, victors and vanquished, but a world composed of people who must help each other solve problems.2

Oak Brook College assists students in refining their analytical and communication skills, always in the context of serving others. Oak Brook College envisions graduates who exemplify the teaching of Jesus Christ to be servants of all.

Conclusion
With this ideal of a great lawyer, Oak Brook College strives to educate students who have the requisite character qualities to become great lawyers. Through its alternative educational methodology, emphasis on Godly character, and apprenticeship opportunities, Oak Brook College has the goal of educating legal professionals who will use their training and skills to serve others. The goal is to train advocates of truth, counselors of reconciliation, and ministers of justice.

     1. Harry T. Edwards, The Growing Disjunction Between Legal Education and the Legal Profession, 91 Mich. L. Rev. 34 (1992).

     2. Wells, supra note 3, at 592.