Letters: Fear factor
I concur with “Distilling Fear,” January: “Lawyering can be scary, but that shouldn’t stop us from being powerful advocates.”
I know that many, if not most, worthwhile endeavors are frightening—with the cause of the fear being that the daunting task has meaning; and hence, it is worth the risk. In the 1960s, I first learned the valuable lesson of distilling fear via participation in sports. I still vividly recall, before the first game of the season, the head coach telling the players that it was “normal to have butterflies in our stomachs; the trick was to make them fly in formation.” Even today, before every stressful task, I remember my coach’s guidance and embrace the challenge to perform my best. As one might expect, I have passed this folksy advice on to my two daughters, who (unlike their mother/my wife) were given the opportunity to acquire this wisdom (like me) firsthand on “the pitch.”
James R. Brewster
Tallahassee, Florida
MILLENNIALS 101
The way almost everyone talks about differences between the generations in “Millennial Stereotypes? These Lawyers Object!” January, is so utterly devoid of reason it’s astonishing. Of course millennials are different from other generations. I think it is relatively uncontroversial to state that any human is profoundly impacted by the environment in which they are born and develop. To assign fault to an entire generation for being any certain way necessarily contradicts this idea.
Do baby boomers really think that if they had been born in the same environment as millennials they would as a group be significantly different than millennials are? Millennials are different than prior generations—but not because of any divergence in character. The only discussion worth having here is how and why, for better or worse, norms, behavior and tendencies have changed among humans who developed during the age of significant technological advances, and what should be done to adjust to these changes.
Tony Frank
Hoffman Estates, Illinois
I’m well over the hill, having raised two Gen Xers, but something that seems missing from the article is an awareness of the different work style of millennials. Studies show that they tackle problems differently—collaboratively, sharing ideas and approaches—instead of working on problems in their individual silos. I wish the article had addressed this work style, as well as the question of whether this work style is compatible with a profession that highly values client confidentiality. It’s interesting that at least two of the individuals the author highlights do not have clients: They are providing services to lawyers.
Allen R. Bentley
Seattle
TAKING ON BULLFIGHTING
Roughly 450 years ago, Pope St. Pius V reflected on bullfighting and wrote how he wished “these cruel and base spectacles of the devil and not of man” be abolished, forbidding attendance at them under penalty of excommunication. Yet in 2018, the ABA Journal published “Besting the Bull,” January, glorifying animal cruelty and ignoring the question of why Mr. James B. Pritikin would travel to Spain “once or twice a year to hone his skills as a bullfighter.”
If the bullfights in which he participates are traditional Spanish bullfights in which the bulls are repeatedly stabbed and ultimately killed, part of the answer may be that such events are broadly prohibited in the U.S. Pritikin’s comment that he himself is “not capable” of killing the bull at the end of the match suggests that he is participating in fights in which bulls are subjected to abuse and cruelty and which end with their deaths.
As chairs of the ABA TIPS Animal Law Committee and the ABA International Animal Law Committee, respectively, we expect more from the Journal and its editorial board, and do not expect to see animal cruelty presented as a quirky or fun hobby. We encourage readers to learn more about this barbaric practice and the surrounding legal issues via the Penn State Law Review article “Olé, Olé, Olé, Oh No!” by Angela N. Velez. Animal cruelty is not entertainment, nor something the ABA should promote to the profession as an acceptable method of obtaining an “adrenaline rush.”
Daina Bray
Nashville, Tennessee
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Marcela Stras
Denver
