What does it mean to be a good lawyer?  The question can inspire, nag, or haunt an entire career.  If anything has become clear from our own attempts to answer that question it is this: being a good lawyer is even harder than being a great one.  Winning big cases and earning acclaim is a piece of cake compared to building the set of skills, attitudes, dispositions, and behaviors that characterize the best lawyers.

            To us, . . .  no question seemed more pressing than “How can I be a quality lawyer?” Or, if there was a more important question, it was “Can I be a quality person and still be a lawyer?” Those were questions which Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance seemed to answer, or partially answer.  Although Pirsig wrote about what it took to be a quality motorcycle mechanic, his lessons applied broadly.motorcycle mechanic, his lessons applied broadly.

           Law, with its emphasis on reasoning and logic, is considered to be a field in the classic mode.  Lawyers are trained to apply analytic thought—Pirsig called it “the knife”—to experience, always killing something in the process. .. . The romantic understanding of the world, with its emphasis on imagination, intuition, and creativity, seemed to have little place in law school.  Feelings should be suppressed; facts and rationality should predominate in our decision-making.

          Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is Pirsig’s attempt to unify the classic and romantic modes of existence and get us moving on the track of Quality, where both modes are considered.  Like the illusion that is either a goblet or two old women looking at each other, but never both at the same time, the classic and romantic perspectives are equally valid, but can’t be held simultaneously.  . . .  Good lawyers, we sensed, used both a romantic and classic perspective to do well for clients—and to preserve their integrity and ideals. Law, with its emphasis on reasoning and logic, is considered to be a field in the classic mode.  Lawyers are trained to apply analytic thought—Pirsig called it “the knife”—to experience, always killing something in the process. .. . The romantic understanding of the world, with its emphasis on imagination, intuition, and creativity, seemed to have little place in law school.  Feelings should be suppressed; facts and rationality should predominate in our decision-making.  . . .