In Kansas City, our family court judges have implemented a truancy diversion program in which several judges, led by Judge Steve Nixon and Judge Marco Roldan, meet with "at risk" children and their parents or parent once each week at 7:30 a.m. The judges discuss not only the truancy problem, but also other family needs that may be contributing to the problem, including the child's safety and well-being and parent accountability for the child's needs. Last month, Judge Nixon took the children he is working with to a Royals baseball game. Judge Roldan has found his Hispanic roots to be of value in working with the families at the McCoy Elementary School where English is a second language.

The truancy diversion program originated in St. Louis County where it continues to flourish. Judge Susan Block, the chief administrative judge of the family court, has assembled a team of eight judges and one lawyer who make weekly visits to troubled children in eight county school districts.

In St. Louis City, Judge Henry Autrey, a former prosecutor, serves in a number of ways. He speaks to various groups on the issue of child abuse prevention. He also participates in reading exercises and tutoring programs for young children at city schools. But his most personally fulfilling service is playing the role of Santa Claus for the elderly residents at a local nursing home. According to Judge Autrey, "We forget the sacrifices they made and the hard work they endured so that we could achieve our personal successes."

Of course, there are countless other examples of commendable extracurricular judicial service, but our Missouri judges must continue to lead the way.

No discussion of the lawyer as public citizen is complete without mention of mentoring. Mentoring is the hot-button topic in professionalism circles. It is seen as a vital part of our professional well-being. One bar organization, the American Inns of Court, which has a chapter in Kansas City and another planned for St. Louis, is devoted entirely to the promotion of mentoring as a tool for the professional development of lawyers. The idea is that the more senior members of the bar take on the role of mentor to the younger members, and to law students, as well. In fact, the mentoring flows in both directions as the older lawyers engage the fresh ideas of their younger understudies.

In my view, mentoring has a dual nature. It is both proactive and passive. It is proactive when senior members of the bar take under their wings and nurture the younger members. It is passive when the senior members of the bar teach by their example of competent representation, ethical conduct, civil demeanor, and public service. In this larger sense, mentoring is the natural byproduct of the practice of law by those with an abiding commitment to professionalism.

There is no better example of the dual nature of mentoring than the experience of one of our founding fathers, John Adams. I was mesmerized this summer while reading the brilliant new Adams biography by Pulitzer prizewinner David McCullough. Those of you who also have read it undoubtedly will join in the praise. Adams, you see, was not only a great patriot and a great statesman, he was a great lawyer, and the first part of the book is an account of his life as a lawyer, with a particular emphasis on the way he was mentored by other lawyers. In Adams' day, one could not become a lawyer without proactive mentoring. There were no law schools, so prospective lawyers engaged practicing lawyers to take them on in a course of study and apprenticeship. In 1756, Adams signed a contract with a young Worchester attorney, James Putnam, in order to study "under his inspection" for two years. After a short time, Adams moved into the Putnam home, teaching school himself during the day and reading law at night.

McCullough relates that after Adams completed his studies with lawyer Putnam, he still felt "miserably unsure of himself," so "he attended court in Boston where, awestruck, he listened to the leading attorneys of the day, Jeremiah Gridley and James Otis, argue cases." This is the passive mentoring to which I referred, learning from the example of others. But with Jeremiah Gridley, it was proactive mentoring as well. According to McCullough,

On the morning [Adams] found his way through the crooked streets of Boston to Jeremiah Gridley's office for the requisite interview for admission to the bar, Gridley, much to Adams' surprise, gave him not a few cursory minutes but several hours, questioning him closely on his readings. With a kindly, paternal air, Gridley also counseled him to "pursue the study of the law itself, rather than the gain of it."

From that time on, Adams "made close study of the attorneys he most admired . . . searching for clues to their success." He thought that "Jeremiah Gridley's 'grandeur' emanated from his great learning," and that "the strength of James Otis was his fiery eloquence." "I find myself imitating Otis," Adams wrote.

Otis became for Adams "the shining example of the lawyer-scholar, learned yet powerful in argument." By the 1760s, Otis had become Adams' political hero, too. In the winter of 1761, Otis argued the famous writs of assistance case. Otis argued that the writs of assistance — precursors of modern day search warrants that permitted law officers to enter and search any premises whenever they wished — were "null and void because they violated the natural rights of Englishmen." Though Otis' plea was turned down, Adams, who had been present only as an observer, remembered Otis' performance "as one of the most inspiring moments of his life, a turning point for him as for history. "Adams also reported that the three judges who heard the case were clad "in their new fresh robes of scarlet English cloth, in their broad hats and immense judicial wigs," but that "Otis, in opposition, was a "flame" unto himself." Years later, reflecting on the impact of Otis' courageous stance, Adams wrote, "Then and there was the first scene of the first act of opposition to the arbitrary claims of Great Britain. Then and there the child Independence was born."

By the mid-1760s, Jeremiah Gridley had died, James Otis was in ill health, and John Adams had become Boston's "busiest attorney." As time would tell, he never forgot the lessons of his mentors, and despite his illustrious career in politics and government, he would never disavow his love for the practice of law. As the revolution loomed large, he felt privileged to be in the profession and wrote of that privilege to a friend:

Now to what higher object, to what greater character, can any mortal aspire than to be possessed of all this knowledge, well digested and ready at command, to assist the feeble and friendless, to discountenance the haughty and lawless, to procure redress to wrongs, the advancement of right to assert and maintain liberty and virtue, to discourage and abolish tyranny and vice?

With these words, and his lifetime of service in commitment to these ideals, Adams himself became the consummate mentor, the consummate lawyer as public citizen.

During the course of our careers, each of us has been blessed with mentors who through their wisdom have given us the skills necessary to practice with professionalism and have imparted to us the spirit of the lawyer as public citizen. I, myself, have been blessed beyond measure by the many lawyers and judges who have mentored me, beginning with my professors in law school who were master teachers, mentors by trade. I see Judge Stan Grimm, who was circuit judge when I was prosecutor and who was a court of appeals judge when I myself was circuit judge, and who has been an invaluable friend throughout my career. I am grateful as well for the mentorship of my colleagues on the Supreme Court, Judges Ronnie White, John Holstein, Mike Wolff, Duane Benton, Laura Stith and Ray Price, and to my former colleagues, Chip Robertson, Ann Covington and Elwood Thomas.

And to this list, I add the finest mentors of all, my father and my grandfather.
If you do nothing else in response to my remarks, at the least, call to mind the lawyers and judges who have mentored you, those who have inspired you to do well in this great profession, and then rededicate yourselves to the mentoring of the young lawyers and judges who look up to you.

To conclude, I quote from an article published years ago in the Journal The Missouri Bar that sums up my message that a lawyer's high standing in the community can only be achieved through service as public citizen.

Where there is need for change or where actual change is occurring, you will find lawyers spearheading the movement or leading the opposition. Where there are endeavors to aid the poor and the oppressed, lawyers will be leading the crusade. When you look for stability in a community, you will find lawyers heading those institutions that typify that stability. This leadership and contribution to community life . . . must continue and flourish if lawyers are to achieve a respectable public image.

Those are the words of my mentor, my father, during his term of service as President of The Missouri Bar. His words hold true today.

--Address by Stephen N. Limbaugh, Jr.
Chief Justice, Supreme Court of Missouri

The Missouri Bar/Judicial Conference
Springfield, Missouri
September 13, 2001