"the Times They Are A-changin':" a Dedication to the Past, Present, and Future of Mercer Law Review
| Publication year | 2022 |
"The Times They Are A-Changin':" A Dedication to the Past, Present, and Future of Mercer Law Review
Cathy Cox
Longtime readers of Mercer Law Review's Annual Survey of Georgia Law likely know that Mercer Law School is steeped in history.2 It is the first American Bar Association-accredited law school in the state of
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Georgia, having earned that distinction in 19253 —more than fifty years after the law school was actually founded in 1873.4 In the same vein, the Mercer Law Review was founded in 1949 and remains the oldest continuously-published law journal in Georgia.5
When I became a student at Mercer Law School, I knew little about Mercer Law's history or heritage, or for that matter, about lawyers or law practice. I enrolled thinking I needed to get a legal education to write more intelligently for the newspaper where I had been working, but the Mercer "mystique" captured me in short order.
During both my tenure as a law student and my service as Editor in Chief of the Mercer Law Review,6 I met Mercer giants who wrote articles for the Mercer Law Review, spoke to our classes and at special events and became good friends of mine over the years—including former Georgia Supreme Court Justices Hardy Gregory, Jr.7 and Hugh P. Thompson,8
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Judge W. Homer Drake, Jr.,9 Paul Quiros,10 Robert Potter,11 Dwight Davis,12 Richard "Doc" Schneider,13 and Charles R. Adams III,14 to name just a few. Captivating speakers, like Robert "Bob" L. Steed,15 changed my whole perception of boring, staid lawyers. I was inspired by women
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like Ruth West,16 who had made their way through Mercer Law School, took leadership positions on the Mercer Law Review, and succeeded in "big law."
My awe for Mercer Law School and the Mercer Law Review only grew over the years, as I continued to meet impressive and imposing Mercer lawyers while I practiced in Atlanta and in my hometown of Bainbridge, all of whom took me under their wings like a member of the family. I cannot recall how many times I stood before a judge I did not know, only to have him or her welcome me as a fellow Mercer Law alumn. I saw Mercer lawyers taking leadership positions on the bench and in the bar. Many of them, like Georgia Court of Appeals Judge Yvette Miller,17 a true Mercer Law trailblazer, treated me like a sister and friend from the first time we met.
I learned in real terms what a force the "Mercer network" of lawyers was when I ran for statewide office, as Mercer Law alumni helped me campaign, raised money for me, and invited me into their firms, their communities, and their homes, whether they had ever met me or not.18 Mercer University President Dr. Kirby Godsey19 invited me to join the University's Board of Trustees, where for years I had a front row seat at the legendary Bob Steed20 /Griffin Bell21 "good cop/bad cop" or
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"Laurel-and-Hardy" comedy show,22 which played out in almost all trustee meetings and will forever be among my most cherished memories.
In the summer of 2017, I returned to Mercer Law School as the new Dean. The Macon Bar Association kindly hosted a welcoming reception for me, where that same group of Mercer Law leaders of the bench and bar, along with emeritus faculty, who taught me long ago, and then-current faculty and staff, including legends like Professor Mike Sabbath23 and Mercer Law Review manager Yonna Shaw,24 packed the Bob Steed25 lobby to greet my husband Mark Dehler and me.26 Over the next four years of my tenure as Dean, I heard from and had so many opportunities to reunite with Mercer lawyers whose love for Mercer Law School runs as deep as mine.
I would be remiss if I did not thank some of the dedicated Mercer Law alumni who responded—repeatedly—to my calls whenever we needed to help students focus on their futures, including, but by no means limited to:
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Also included are all of our Board of Visitors, Alumni Board, Black Law Student Association (BLSA) Alumni Board, and Young Alumni Council members. I am surely leaving out the names of many very generous and helpful alumni, and I apologize for my oversight.
At the same time, I could see the same bonds of friendship forming among our students. I knew well that they would blend seamlessly into the Mercer Law network after graduation and benefit, just as I had, when they sought leadership roles as practicing lawyers. State Bar President Darrell Sutton,61 who served during the height of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, current State Bar President Sally Akins,62 and Younger Lawyer Division President Ron Daniels,63 illustrate this proud tradition of service to the legal profession perfectly.
As deep as the history of Mercer Law School runs, and as well-connected as our alumni are to each other, I have always been impressed that our alumni spend far more time focused on the "real" world and the future than they do reminiscing about our compelling past. When I was a candidate for the Secretary of State of Georgia, most of my Mercer colleagues did not travel down memory lane during my campaign gatherings. Instead, Mercer lawyers urged me to bring the Secretary of State's office into the 21st century with technology that would better serve their law practices. Similarly, the many dedicated alumni who volunteered to serve on the law school's Board of Visitors while I was Dean spent every meeting inquiring about how they could help the law school and law students be better prepared for practice on their first day after graduation. To a person, they knew that new and different skills and experiences would be needed to maintain Mercer's reputation for graduating "practice-ready" lawyers.
The Mercer Law Review could also cling to retelling stories of a glorious past and hold on to the business and publishing model that has sustained
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it for more than seventy years. Thankfully, the Mercer Law Review finds itself ready to look ahead, ready to join its alumni, subscribers, and authors in a world that, while new to the Mercer Law Review, is the world where lawyers have been practicing for some time. Just as newspapers, magazines, and a myriad of other print publications have experienced over the past two decades, readership of print law journals has moved into the digital world. Imagine my shock in 2019 when our law school business manager brought me the data showing that subscriptions to our printed law review had dropped from the thousands into the hundreds, and that our complementary copies to government offices exceeded our paid copies. Rome was burning before our eyes, it seemed!
As much as I loved, and still love, to hold printed copies of books, newspapers, and magazines in my hands, I quickly recognized that we were no longer serving the legal community and our alumni by working tirelessly throughout the year to publish a scholarly journal that no one could access. In fact, palatial law firm law libraries, lined with shelves of printed law journals and appellate reporters had become such a relic of the past that our readers literally had no space for printed journals. We also were not serving our dedicated authors when their scholarship could not be seen and shared by lawyers, judges, and other legal scholars around the world.
It was simply time to move online—where the rest of the world is working.
And that is what the Mercer Law Review has been doing over the past two years. We began by transitioning toward digital publishing in 2020 through 2021, and last year in 2021 and 2022, only two individual issues—our popular Annual Survey of Georgia Law and the Eleventh Circuit Survey—were published in print. Now, for the first time, this volume (2022—2023) marks the jump to a fully digital Mercer Law Review.
The times, they are a-changin', as Bob Dylan64 (or Professor Gary Simson65 ) might sing. The Mercer Law Review is preparing for its next
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century of service to the legal community with a dedicated group of student editors who are making the change to digital publishing. Our hope is that publishing the law review in a digital format will make all of its contents easier for you to find when researching a legal issue, easier for you to read without the necessity of retrieving a paper book from a library, and easier for you to share when you find a compelling or persuasive article.
The digital format also gives our authors the ability to see how often their article is read and cited—an exciting way to track the impact of their scholarship. For our dedicated law review editors and members: learning to write, edit and publish in an electronic format is truly preparation for the real world they will find in practice upon graduation, furthering the incredible educational experience that law review membership has always provided.
Mercer Law School has long enjoyed a reputation for graduating "practice-ready" lawyers.66 Its Habeas Project, founded by Professor Sarah Gerwig67 and now directed by Brian Kammer,68 puts students directly into practice...
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