In-House Counsel

Professor, Can You Just Give Me A Straight Answer?

No matter what area of the law you find yourself in, rarely will 'straight answers' exist.

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(Photo via Getty)

For the past few years, I have had the opportunity to serve as an adjunct professor at one of our city’s law schools.

In addition to giving me a newfound respect for my own law professors (turns out they really had to do more than just get a law review article published every once in a while), my adjunct work has also kept me rather optimistic as to the future of the legal profession.

By and large, I am greeted each semester by a new crop of students who often display an intellect and understanding of the law far surpassing what I can recall mine being as a 2L. That being said, I have begun to notice a recent rise in those students demanding instant answers.

While previously, my hypotheticals were often greeted by students with every attorney’s favorite response, “it depends,” it seems as though my more recent students, after some quick, live internet searching of my made-up fact pattern, have begun to cite comparable real life cases as a source of authority in their answer.

“Well, gee, professor, if your hypothetical is anything like the recent case in California where two hospitals merged and had a similar dispute over a contract provision, then clearly the outcome to your hypothetical is X.”

Although such answers generally make me cringe on the inside, begrudgingly I do have to give them credit for their fast research. It has also caused me to up my hypothetical game by incorporating more of my own in-house experience into class hypotheticals.

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Goodbye to the days with softball hypotheticals contemplating Hospital A and Patient B being entangled in a medical malpractice case, and hello to hypotheticals influenced by my last Tuesday when the CEO called to update me on a potential data breach and then demand an answer on the best path forward before he briefed the hospital’s board in five minutes.

Want to strike fear in a millennial heart? Tell them they can’t use their respective electronic device as a crutch and have them formulate their best guidance with only their minds and previous experience.

After a few classes of my new hypotheticals, a student confidently rose his hand and said, “Professor, can you just give me a straight answer?”

I beamed with pride on the inside knowing I had made my point. When you are in the real life in-house world, the facts are rarely clear and time is never on your side.

Rest assured, I am not advocating formulating an answer of legal import on a whim. I would never let my company make a decision based on my legal advice unless I was confident in it.

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But rather, while my role as a professor is to teach my students about my niche area of the law, it is also to prepare them for what life outside of the ivory tower of academia really looks like.

And I can assure you, no matter what area of the law you find yourself in, rarely will “straight answers” exist.

Stephen R. Williams is in-house counsel with a multi-facility hospital network in the Midwest. His column focuses on a little talked about area of the in-house life, management. You can reach Stephen at [email protected].

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