Seniors and juniors

Still on the subject of teaching and learning, Ben Zoma famously asks (Avot 4:1) “Who is wise?”, then answers his own question: “The person who learns from everyone”. Some commentators take this literally, while others limit its scope of application. However, the principle is clear: we should keep an open mind that enables us to learn from every situation in which we find ourselves and should certainly not exclude the possibility that someone who is junior to us in terms of age, experience or knowledge might nonetheless be able to enrich our understanding.

For many years I acted as a consultant to a major London-based law firm.  My role was to provide a level of academic or theoretical understanding of my subject to supplement the highly practice-based expertise of my practising colleagues. During the course of my time there, I had a long conversation with one, a relatively senior lawyer with aspirations to become a partner. This lawyer was a bit of an enthusiast and enjoyed discussing developments in the law for its own sake and not necessarily because those developments affected any of the firm’s clients.

One might have assumed that the best people to go to, when asking deep and meaningful questions about the law, were the partners. They, after all, were the lawyers at the top of the tree and had got there by demonstrating their legal expertise. But this was not usually the case. While the partners were unquestionably the most skilled and seasoned lawyers in the department, they often had relatively little to say about recent developments and theoretical perspectives in their field. Why was this? Because they had usually studied the law quite a long time earlier and had found little time to keep up with subsequent changes in the law. Many followed developments only on a need-to-know basis. The most junior lawyers, in contrast, having most recently studied the law, were closer to it and a good deal more up-to-date. So, paradoxically, the lawyers with the greatest knowledge of the current law were generally those at the bottom of the tree, not their elders and betters. There should therefore be no shame or embarrassment in a senior lawyer seeking advice or information from a fresh-faced trainee.

Incidentally, it has been my experience that, in many law firms, trainee lawyers do not receive the respect they deserve. This is certainly contrary to the principle laid down by Rabbi Elazar ben Shammua (Avot 4:15) that a person should let the honour of his student be as dear to him as his own. Every senior lawyer was a junior lawyer once, and that alone should remind them what it feels like to be an apprentice who lives at the mercy of his master.