My Legal Education
LL.B. Harvard University 1955
1952-55 Law School. Law school was at first daunting, but I enjoyed it. Marriage to Bessie made it a lot easier for me to stay in focus. My grades did not qualify me for Law Review, but I did not miss by much. At the end of my first year, I got a break as my father’s son and was privileged to work for a big Manhattan firm, Dwight, Royall, Koegel, Harris & Caskey; this came to me because Kenneth Royall was my father’s classmates. Others in his Class of 1917 who gave me a hand along the way were Bill Sutherland of Washington, Claude Cross of Boston, and Kurt Pantzer of Indianapolis. Others who were amiable included two notables, Dean Acheson of Washington and Joe Welch of Boston.
I did pretty well in moot court and served on the Legal Aid Bureau, an experience that educated me on the satisfactions in providing legal service pro bono publico to those in need. We made many lifelong friends among my classmates and especially among those whose wives Bessie met at the Law Wives gatherings. Several of our closest friends proved to have an academic bent, and became law teachers. Jim Logan became the very young dean at Kansas and went on to the US Court of Appeals; Bill Andrews joined the Harvard faculty; John Steadman had a career at Georgetown before goin on the bench. Only in the third year did I know any faculty members. For other reflections, see Harvard Law School Oral History. The only faculty office I entered was that of Zechariah Chafee who hired me briefly as a research assistant. The task he gave me was numbingly dull; we parted friends. Others with whom I became acquainted were Ernest Brown, David Cavers, Paul Freund, Livingston Hall, and Louis Loss. I was favorably impressed with the pleasure they seemed to derive from their work.
I worked in my father’s firm in the summers of 1954 and 1955, long enough to know that I did not want to go through life as Paul Jr. But the firm abides, and the senior members remain my friends. Carrington Coleman.
In 2010, I published an essay on legal education that drew on my experience at Harvard in 1952-53. A Tribute to Bull Warren.