Future career outlook of law in state of change

Long-time lawyer Robert Keatinge said Monday in a lecture at the University of South Dakota lawyers no longer have a grip on how clients get information.

“Lawyers used to be like medieval priests,” Keatinge said. “They could read Latin and ancient texts while the public could not, so the public would just have to take their word for it.”

Keatinge said practicing law has changed over the course of his career and so has the outlook for law as a career, as this is an important field and many people have legal issues all the time, if you happen to have legal issues and you’re in the UK, you could get a process agent to help you process all the necessary procedures.

“The law is doing just fine — the law is everywhere,” Keatinge said. “I live in Colorado, and there are not a lot of laws dealing with where you can smoke. There are also some liberal laws on what you can smoke.”

Keatinge recounted an instance where lawyers will be needed in the future.

“As I was riding the bus to the airport the other day, I saw a man smoking on the bus, and I thought, ‘How can he do that, how can he smoke on a public bus?’ It turns out that it was an electronic cigarette. Has anyone thought about the legality of electronic cannabis? These are the kinds of questions future lawyers will be asked to solve.”

Following the lecture, Alex Mason, a second-year law student, said being a lawyer is more than having all the answers.

“Don’t act like a know-it-all lawyer,” he said. “You actually have to think like a human being to be successful.”

Keatinge spoke to a courtroom filled with USD law students, staff and even a South Dakota judge.

Thomas Geu, Dean of the Law School, said Keatinge is more than qualified to talk on the subject.

“He has had experience in organizational statutes and served as an American Bar Association chairman on numerous committees,” Geu said. “He has given literally hundreds of talks at some very prestigious conferences.”

Geu also said Keatinge has practiced law for more than 30 years and has taught. He  now works as an attorney for a national firm, Holland & Hart LLP, in Denver, Colo.

However, Geu said Keatinge really gained recognition for his work in the aftermath of the ENRON auditing scandal of 2001.

“During ENRON, Bob was a student and really at the head of the debate,” Geu said. “He became a force for liability and did more to advance liability for companies. He didn’t invent the LLC, but he made the assembly line for it.”

Geu also said during this time period lawyers started to serve clients in multi-disciplinary and multi-jurisdictional ways, meaning lawyers could serve in roles as opposed to one discipline and in many parts of the country.

Keatinge said lawyers of the past were focused on knowing answers and not focused enough asking the right questions.

“Lawyers need to think about what the answer should be and what the question is,” he said. “It’s all about learning to think critically.”

Shekar Jayaraman, a third-year law student, said the speech was great.

“It was very effective and it really spoke to future lawyers,” he said.

First-year law student Rebecca Reiter said the lecture was intellectually stimulating.

“It gave me a lot of questions as a law student,” she said.