Fear factor

• Author: James R. Brewster
• Pages: 6-6

FEAR FACTOR

I concur with “Disti lling Fear,” January, page 22:

“Lawyering ca n be scary, but that shouldn’t stop us from

being powerful advoc ates.”

I know that many, if not most, worthwhi le endeavors

are frightening—with t he cause of the fear being that

the daunting task ha s meaning; and hence, it is worth

the risk. In the 1960s, I fi rst learned the valuable lesson

of distilling fea r via participation in sports. I st ill vividly

recall, before the fir st game of the season, the head coach

telling the players that it was “norm al to have butterflies

in our stomachs; the trick w as to make them fly in forma-

tion.” Even today, before every stressful ta sk, I remember

my coach’s guidance and embrace the cha llenge to per-

form my best. As one might ex pect, I have passed this

folksy advice on to my t wo daughters, who (unlike their

mother/my wife) were given the opportunity to acquire

this wisdom (li ke me) firsthand on “the pitch.”

James R. Brewster

Tallahassee, Florida

MILLENNIALS 101

The way almost everyone ta lks about dierences

between the generations in “Mil lennial Stereotypes?

These Lawyers Object!” Januar y, page 52, is so utterly

devoid of reason it’s astonishing. Of cour se millennials

are dierent from other generations. I th ink it is relatively

uncontroversial to stat e that any human is profoundly

impacted by the envir onment in which they are born and

develop. To assign fault to an entire generation for being

any certain w ay necessarily contradicts th is idea.

Do baby boomers really thi nk that if they had been

born in the same environment a s millennials they would

as a group be significa ntly dierent than millennials

are? Millennials ar e dierent than prior generations—

but not because of any divergence in cha racter. The only

discussion worth hav ing here is how and why, for better

or worse, norms, behavior and tendencies have cha nged

among humans who developed during the age of signi fi-

cant technologica l advances, and what should be done to

adjust to these changes.

Ton y Fr an k

Hofman Estates, Illinois

I’m well over the hill, having rai sed two Gen Xers,

but something that seems missing f rom the article is

an awareness of the dierent work sty le of millennials.

Studies show that they tac kle problems dierently—col-

laboratively, sharing ideas and approaches—inst ead of

working on problems in their individual si los. I wish

the article had a ddressed this work style, as well as the

question of whether this work style is compatible w ith

a profession that highly values client confidentia lity. It’s

interesting that at lea st two of the individuals the author

highlights do not have clients: They are providi ng ser-

vices to law yers.

Allen R. Bentley

Seattle

TAKING ON BULLFIGHTING

Roughly 450 years ago, Pope St. Pius V re flected on

bullfighting and wrote how he w ished “these cruel and

base spectac les of the devil and not of man” be abol-

ished, forbidding attendance at them under pena lty of

excommunication. Yet in 2018, the ABA Journal pub-

lished “Besting the Bull,” January, page 10, glorify ing

animal cruelt y and ignoring the question of why Mr.

James B. Pritikin wou ld travel to Spain “once or twice a

year to hone his skills a s a bullfighter.”

If the bullfights in which he par ticipates are tradi-

tional Spanish bullfig hts in which the bulls are repeat-

edly stabbed and ult imately killed, part of the answer

may be that such events are broad ly prohibited in the

U.S. Pritikin’s comment that he himself i s “not capable”

of killing the bull at the end of the mat ch suggests that

he is participating in fights i n which bulls are subjected

to abuse and cruelty and wh ich end with their deaths.

As chairs of the A BA TIPS Animal Law Committ ee

and the ABA Internationa l Animal Law Committee ,

respectively, we expect more f rom the Journal and its

editorial boar d, and do not expect to see animal cr uelty

presented as a quirky or f un hobby. We encourage read-

ers to learn more about this ba rbaric practice and the

surrounding legal issue s via the Penn State Law Review

article “Olé, Olé, Olé, Oh No!” by Angela N. Velez.

Animal cr uelty is not entertainment, nor something the

ABA should promote to the profession as an a cceptable

method of obtaining an “adren aline rush.”

Daina Bray Marcela Stras

Nashville, Tennessee Denver

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Letters

6 || ABA JOURNAL MARCH 2018