Message from the Director

Dear Colleague,

A new academic year is here, full of potential for wonderful and rewarding professional experiences as we play our role in educating the next generation of lawyers. 

O yeah, you might say, what world does this guy inhabit?

I know that lore has it that our forefathers (and mothers!) did all the easy work, right?  That all that remains for us is the penury of budget cuts, dealing with unappreciative students, and perhaps more than our fair share of demanding, and ever expanding, constituencies.  But might this be too facile of a story, too blatantly revisionist of a history?  Could it be that things were seldom easy for law school administrators, that despite all odds, there were always unsung heroes in our ranks?

Do you feel overworked?  A colleague, veteran of the trade, but young at heart, jovially reminded me the other day that, for all practical purposes, he used to be the Admissions Director, Registrar, Academic Counselor and Programs Coordinator for a busy law school, offering two programs of study, all by himself, in the good ol’ days.

Is your computer acting up?  I am old enough to remember the purple and lavender messes of mimeographs, and the dying staccato of Remingtons being replaced by Selectrics, when a typo was as permanent as the paper via which it transcended into the immortality of academic records.

Did you have to deal with an unhappy student today?  Perhaps you have heard of that peculiar ritual of a time not too long past, when students camped out, in the wee hours of the morning, for a chance to register early, at the front counter, where a no less sleep-deprived clerk (that was the usual title) had to fend off an interminable stream of not so subtle invective towards the tyrannical registration gods, that unjustly conspired to deny seats to students yearning for a spot at the feet of Mr. Right, or whatever funky, musty, and hallowed name that all-time favorite professor had.

Need I go on?  No, as I am sure by now you have conjured-up memories of not so pleasant stories from days gone by.  If you are young enough to know no different than today’s version of your office (and Office apps), go and find the oldest administrator in your floor, and ask him or her to regale you with stories of yore, and you might just smile, a little incredulous grin, when considering the fallacies of the legend of the good ol’ days.

Is everything better today?  No.  We can’t leave work at work anymore, bound as we are by the ethereal tethers of technology.  Our typos propagate at the speed of light across vast networks, where privacy is nothing but another myth from the past.  And then there are the curse of fluorescent light, the all-darkening cloud of emails that daily emanates from your Windows desktop, “real” windows that won’t open, and that fake software that won’t close.

It is a mixed bag for sure.  But I posit that it always was, and it will always be. If a future Dickens were to describe today, she might restate that “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way...”

Which way will you go this year?  I challenge you to have the best of times, to be wise, to believe, to hope, to make such a profound difference for the better today, that tomorrow and afterwards, your students will have reason to remember your time, at your school, as the good ol’ days!

At your service,

Roberto A. Koch
Executive Director 
National Network of Law School Officers
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