Reading: "Pottery: A Personal Exploration," in Carla Needleman, The Work of Craft: An Inquiry into the Nature of Crafts and Craftsmanship 3-21 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979)

(1) When Carla Needleman talks about craft and her work as a potter does she say anything of interest to lawyers?

(2) How is Needleman's conception of craft as a study of failure relevant to our inquiry into the moral and ethical dimension of lawyering?

(3) Seymour Wishman argued (with himself) that there was "nothing personal" in his humiliation of Ms. Lewis when he brutally cross-examined her during the trial of the rapist who had attacked her. How does Needleman reverse the argument and find the "personal" in the pots she makes?

(4) Is craft an appropriate metaphor for what you have set out to do as a lawyer?

(5) How is the craft ethic promoted and impeded by how you have been asked to go about your studies as a student of law?

(6) How does a craft ethic (and ethics) make us better lawyers?

Michael Maccoby, in a study of corporate managers, found that those who saw themselves as craftsmen had "a sense of self-worth based on knowledge, skill, discipline, and self-reliance." [Michael Maccoby, The Gamesman: The New Corporate Leaders 43 (New York: Bantam, 1978)]. While the craftsman is interested in success and money, he is, says Maccoby, "motivated even more by the problem to be solved, the challenge of the work itself and his satisfaction is creating something of quality."[45]. In what sense to good craftsmen make good lawyers?

1. On craft work and lawyer ethics, see: James R. Elkins, Ethics: Professionalism, Craft, and Failure, 73 Ky. L. J. 937 (1984-85).

2. Karl Llewellyn's essay, "On the Good, the True, the Beautiful, in Law," first published in 1942, draws attention to law as craft work and provides a jurisprudential grounding for the idea of lawyers as craftsmen. [Karl Llewellyn, Jurisprudence: Realism in Theory and Practice 167-213 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962)]

3. "In a stable society, composing a life is somewhat like throwing a pot or building a house in a traditional form: the materials are known, the hands move skillfully in tasks familiar from thousands of performances, the fit of the completed whole in the common life is understood. Traditional styles of pottery or building are not usually rigid; they respond to chance and allow a certain scope for individual talent and innovation. But the traditional craftsperson does not face the task of solving every problem for the first time. In a society like our own, we make a sharp contrast between creativity and standardization, yet even those who work on factory production lines must craft their own lives, whether graceful and assured or stunted and askew.

Today, the materials and skills from which a life is composed are no longer clear. It is no longer possible to follow the paths of previous generations. . . . Our lives not only take new directions; they are subject to repeated redirection. . . . Just as the design of a building or of a vase must be rethought when the scale is changed, so must the design of lives. Many of the most basic concepts we use to construct a sense of self or the design of a life have changed their meanings: Work. Home. Love. Commitment." [Mary Catherine Bateson, Composing a Life 1-2 (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1989)]

History of the Work Ethic

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