A perk of professorship is the collaboration with 2/3L students as research assistants. The students learn from us; we learn from them. Case in point: Spanish is the first language of the current R.A. assisting on my scholarship. She tells me that Spanish has two different words for two different concepts: schooling (Los Estudios) and education (La Educación). The first is learning from teachers in a building while the second is learning from family and close personal mentors in the hurly-burly of life. With the first, you end up with a degree; with the second, you end up with enduring life lessons.

The difference, we discussed, between the idealized and gauzy concepts of professionalism preached by well-meaning bar associations and taught by dual JDs and PhDs in many law schools  with the real and concrete lessons of professionalism learned from practice. I advocate for the latter version of professionalism, which is the vantage point of La Education. Here then are five forgotten truths of true professionalism, sadly camouflaged by the new normal.