Bok's Report

To the Editors of the Crimson:

As a well-known lawyer in Philadelphia for many years with extensive experience in trial advocacy. I read with jaundiced eye the flatulent lament of President Derek Bok as reported to Time Magazine. As any experienced lawyer knows particularly a trial lawyer, the individual and the small businessman has the greatest need of dedicated professional service when matters come into litigation Large, multinational corporations, large public corporations, organs of government, labor unions and other powerful business, government and service organizations and corporations, have untold resources with which to employ qualified legal counsel and professional public opinion manipulators. The individual's sole resource when confronted with these adversaries is usually a retained professional, such as a lawyer Instead of a sweeping indictment of the legal profession in America President Bok's remarks in his Annual Report to Harvard University's Board of Overseers reveals his own lack of experience in public affairs and in professional affiars. President Bok has the temerity to make such broad any sweeping foolish accusations because his father was a well-known, and by some, highly-regarded trial judge in Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania, where I practice. However, I think that President Bok has been cooped up far too long in his ivory tower to understand what is going on in the world outside at this time. For that reason, I cannot accept his naive concept that matters involving conflicting interests can be settled by conciliation around a conference table. Not only is such a concept opposed to our system of government and our economic system, in fact, it does not work anywhere in the world. President Bok's statement that the result of legal education is a massive diversion of educational talent into pursuits that often add little to the growth of the economy, the pursuit of culture, or the enhancement of the human spirit, is simply not true. The independent professional attorney is one of the true sources of independent strength in American life, along with the small businessman, the local newspaper, the local television station, the independent telephone system, and the private express mail services. Without these support mechanisms, the average citizen would be manipulated completely by big business, big government, big unions and big organizations generally.

President Bok's statements make it crystal clear that when anyone is protected too much from the realities of life their skin thin their voice becomes shrill, and their roots wither, President Bok should retire as Harvard President and go to work for a year as a dishwasher or a cab driver, or some other occupation where you come into contact with the rest of humanity. Malcolm W. Berkowitz, J.D.