Lawyers: The Right Track

Walter E. Craig was born with a problem: his father, grandfather, great-grandfather and two uncles were all lawyers. The legal profession seemed an unavoidable family inheritance, and he wanted to escape. He went to Stanford determined to become an engineer, switched to economics, worked as a fuel and light bulb salesman after graduation. Only when he found out how hard it was to make a living did Craig give in and go back to Stanford to study law. He was on the right track at last. He has prospered handsomely as a corporation lawyer in Phoenix, Ariz., and today he is president of the American Bar Association.

President Craig, 54, is a man with a self-imposed mission: to improve the layman’s understanding of law and lawyers. “People are shy of the law and shy of lawyers,” he says. “There always has to be a loser in the courtroom, and that means there is a built-in disappointment connected with the law.” What is called for, he thinks, is “education as to the fundamentals, the historic principles of American government, so that people can develop an understanding of how the laws came about.”

Of Due Process. Craig has long had a vital interest in education. He is a former P.T.A. president, a member of Stanford Law School’s Board of Visitors, a founder of the A.B.A.’s program on Education Against Communism, and an enthusiastic advocate of the Continuing Legal Education project, which fosters state and local programs for the instruction of practicing lawyers. In speeches as A.B.A. president, Craig never tires of urging lawyers to take on responsibilities as educators. Last week, in a speech to the New Mexico bar association in Albuquerque, he called upon lawyers “to lead the American people in a program of education and re-education and rededication to the philosophy of America.”

Craig’s next stop was French Lick, Ind. Speaking to the Indiana bar association, he argued that the lawyer’s ethical responsibilities go beyond mere observance of the rules in the code of professional ethics. The lawyer must be “a guardian of due process,” must “assert leadership in the struggle to maintain the philosophy of freedom under law,” must accept a responsibility to help “educate our young people to the merit and genius of our complex form of Government.”

Too Busy for Business. Craig is also working toward other objectives during his one-year term as A.B.A. president. He plumps for improvements in the compensation and quality of lower-court judges. “About 85% of all justice,” he says, “begins and ends in the small courts—justice of the peace and police courts. It never gets any farther, and most people have experience only with such courts. We should have well-qualified men in those courts.” Because he thinks there should be more communication between the A.B.A. and lawyers in foreign countries, especially in Latin America, he plans to make a trip to Latin America this fall. During the past 14 months he has been so busy with A.B.A. business that he has spent only six weeks in his own office in Phoenix.

Before long, Craig will probably quit altogether as a practicing lawyer. President Kennedy has appointed him a judge of the federal district court in Arizona, and the Senate recently confirmed him. All that remains is for him to accept. He will undoubtedly do that, but he may defer taking his place on the bench for a while, perhaps until the end of his A.B.A. term next summer.