Law school helped me learn how to think. The thing I like is thinking from both sides.” –David Dillon ‘76, JD - Chairman and CEO, The Kroger Company
“Law school teaches you a great way to think and identify issues and those are great skills that you use all through your business career.” –Angela Braly ‘85, JD - President and CEO, WellPoint, Inc.
“I think with the legal training and that experience—be it in the case method or just in the sparring back and forth on ideas and arguments it gives you a level of discipline, of insight, of confidence.” –Edward Rust ‘75, JD/MBA - Chairman and CEO, State Farm Insurance
Article written by: Mark Curriden, Director of Communications at Vinson & Elkins LLP Dean Attanasio interviewed Edward B. Rust ‘75, Angela Braly ‘85, and David Dillon ‘76 for this article.
When Thomas Jefferson ran for President of the United States in 1800, he was asked if his skills as a trial lawyer made him a better political candidate. Jefferson responded that his legal training taught him how to think and decide, and those attributes would make him a better president.
Or, as Tony LaRussa, a lawyer and the extraordinarily successful baseball manager of the St. Louis Cardinals, stated, “Law school didn’t teach me how to hit the ball or how to run or how to pitch. But because of law school, I see the game playing out in front of me on the field in a very different way. My legal training taught me to put myself in our opponents’ dugout. Law school taught me how to analyze and to best deal with a specific situation. “The best degree a baseball manager can get is a J.D.,” he said. “The law degree taught me how to study, how to think, and how to develop and implement a strategy.”
And closer to home, Robert Rowling, the long-time chairman and chief executive officer of Omni Hotels and 1979 Southern Methodist University Law graduate, said, “Often I am asked if I had it to do all over again, since I practiced law such a short period of time, would I go back to get a law degree or would I get a MBA? I can tell you that I would not trade my law degree from SMU for any MBA in the country. I got a tremendous background at SMU in corporate law, corporate tax, and partnership tax. The professors were just unbelievable. They gave me a background for business that I don’t think I could have gotten any place else. Today, if you need to find a great commercial law school, you couldn’t beat SMU.”
Lawyers have always been crucial to the success of an organization or company, but for the past several decades, lawyers have been confined to the role of general counsel or compliance officer. The position of chief executive officer and board chairman, it was believed, was better suited for those educated and trained in business, management, finance, engineering, or even political science. The thinking was that lawyers were simply not good at business.
There have been, of course, a few notable exceptions over the years. Southwest Airlines co-founder and former chairman Herb Kelleher and former Time Warner chairman Richard Parsons come immediately to mind. But they were, at the time, considered the exception, not the rule. The viewpoint of Wall Street was that the lawyers didn’t lead, they litigated. Great business leaders looked to the future, while lawyers held onto the past with their love of precedent and stare decisis.
But that perspective has been steadily changing.
Today, eight of the top Fortune 50 chief executive officers have law degrees – double the number from a decade ago. And many Wall Street insiders predict that boards of directors at large public and private corporations in the United States and abroad will give significant consideration to a lawyer as a leader.
Of the eight top Fortune 50 CEOs, three received their law degrees from SMU’s Dedman School of Law – the most of any law school in the country. Harvard Law School comes in second with two. In fact, only Harvard Business School had more graduates (five) among the top 50.
The three SMU Dedman Law graduates – David B. Dillon of Kroger Inc.; Edward R. Rust Jr. of State Farm Insurance Companies; and Angela F. Braly of WellPoint, Inc. – all agree that their legal education and training played a significant role in their becoming C-level corporate executives (CEO, CFO, COO). Individually, they have been named by Forbes, the Wall Street Journal, Fortune, BusinessWeek, and other prominent publications as among the most powerful and influential leaders of business and public policy....
To read the entire article, please download the .pdf file here: http://www.law.smu.edu/Media/Email/Alumni/ChiefExecutives.pdf