Why I’m not looking forward to listening to Stephen Covey

This is is partly a public service announcement and partly a bit of commentary.  First off, I want to remind everyone that the 8th Annual J. Reuben Clark Law Society Broadcast is tomorrow night at 8:00 PM EST.  This year’s speaker is well-known author Stephen R. Covey.  For the past few years the Annual Broadcast has coincided with the JRCLS Conference, and the main address is beamed out to LDS stake centers and chapels equipped with satellite dishes.  I have enjoyed the past addresses, and encourage you to attend.

However, I have something of a bone to pick with the selection of Stephen Covey as the keynote speaker.  I see the JRCLS as an organization centered on the intersection of faith, particularly the Mormon faith, and the law.  Most of the past JRCLS Broadcast speakers have embodied that purpose fairly well, such as last year’s excellent address by attorney and apostle Quentin L. Cook, or the 2006 address by LDS Church General Counsel, Elder Lance B. Wickman.  Those speakers are uniquely qualified to speak to the relevant issues, challenges, and benefits of a legal practice with religious convictions.

At least one previous JRCLS Broadcast speaker deviated from this formula: former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor spoke at the 2008 broadcast.  I suppose the logic is that her high stature in the legal field made her a good choice as keynote speaker.  I agree whole-heartedly with that approach.  As a conference organizer, how can you turn down the opportunity to have a former Supreme Court justice speak at your event?  I think a speaker from the opposite side of the law/religion intersection would also be welcome.  For example, if Mormon Church President Thomas S. Monson were to speak at a JRCLS broadcast, I would be interested to hear what he had to say even though he isn’t a lawyer because of his high stature in the religious arena.

My problem with the choice of Stephen Covey is that he is none of the above.  He isn’t an attorney and can’t speak to aspects of legal practice with any epistemic authority. True, he is Mormon, but that doesn’t render him particularly qualified to speak to the faith-related issues faced by LDS attorneys.  To put it succinctly, his Mormon-ness can’t trump his lack of legal-ness in my mind.

This isn’t to say that I expect Covey to be a poor speaker.  To the contrary, I fully expect his remarks to be engaging and interesting.  I actually have never read anything by Covey, nor have I heard him speak before, but the man is a professional speaker, and you don’t get in that position by boring crowds.  But Covey’s selection as the keynote speaker implicitly chooses the Mormon over the legal, when I think the purpose of JRCLS is to blend the two.

I think I know why the conference organizers selected Stephen Covey. He was probably the highest-profile name they could get.  But being a Mormon pop culture icon doesn’t qualify anyone to speak on any subject.  The JRCLS Conference keynote address would scarcely be different from a business or YSA conference.  I would rather hear from an actual JRCLS member, and they can’t all be that hard to schedule. There are three in the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, dozens in the Quorums of the Seventy, dozens in the state and federal judiciaries, and hundreds of potential speakers in the U.S. and overseas that have interesting legal practices.  It seems to me that this is a missed opportunity.

Image credit: NASA.