Remembering Veterans Day

Editor’s Note: This article was written prior to Veterans Day.

This time of year, I always consider writing about Veterans Day. Many people see Veterans Day as simply a day off from work, while others acknowledge the sacrifice that veterans have made for this country in various ways—social media posts, flag raising ceremonies, moments of silence, etc. Consider, for a moment, how rare it is to run across a veteran in the practice of law.

Illinois has approximately 97,000 attorneys admitted to the bar. I could find no published statistics on the number of veterans that are admitted to the Illinois bar on short notice, but I was able to find a statistic that approximately 4.6% of the adult population of Illinois is a veteran. While no statistician in her or his right mind would assume that the percentage of veterans in the population matches the percentage of veterans in the practice of law, I am not a statistician. If 4.6% of Illinois attorneys are veterans, that means that 4,462 of active Illinois lawyers have served our country in uniform.

Veterans are generally different from the rest of the population. Service to our country, to our community, is part of who we are. We tend to put others before ourselves, oftentimes to our own detriment, because of this sense of service. This is not to say that we are superior to other lawyers because of our need to serve, it is simply a part of who we are. The last time there was a draft in the United States was during the Vietnam War, and the draft ended in June of 1973. While there are likely a few active lawyers that were drafted during this time, most of us volunteered to serve. By volunteering to serve in the military, veterans often delayed their careers in order to wear a uniform for a given period of time. Being a veteran, however, is more than simply agreeing to don a uniform. Being a veteran means that you volunteered to take-up arms to defend this great nation from all enemies, foreign and domestic. Being a veteran means that you were willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for the People of the United States. Being a veteran means that you were willing to endure the harshest of conditions in order to protect the freedom that is often taken for granted.

The next time that you learn that a colleague is a veteran, consider how rare of an occurrence that is. If you reflect on that person’s actions in a matter, you might find yourself understanding why that attorney is the way that s/he is when you overlay being an attorney with being a veteran.

Happy Veterans Day.