Joseph Trachtman Lecture

Malcolm A. Moore has written The Joseph Trachtman Lecture—The Origin of Our Species: Trust and Estate Lawyers and How They Grew for the Fall, 2006 edition of the ACTEC Journal.   
   

Here is the introduction to this most interesting and entertaining article:
   

To those of us who have devoted our professional lives to the practice of law, and in particular trust and estate law, it is not surprising that there could well be some curiosity about our predecessors who found themselves drawing instruments, counseling clients, and admitting wills to probate. When did an identifiable practice or profession (or indeed, having someone write down another’s wishes with respect to disposition of property at death) begin? Where do we need to look to begin to get an answer to these questions? In which countries of the civilized world did some of these beginnings occur? What kind of people found themselves being of service to others in our kind of practice? What kind of lives did these people lead?
   

All of these questions have fascinated me over the years. This paper is an attempt to provide answers to these questions, to the extent possible offer insights into the progression of the practice over the millennia, and bring some kind of a unified meaning or conclusion to it all. My search began not on the internet, but in ancient, old, and not-so-old books, manuscripts, and treatises. I consulted with legal historians, both academic and nonacademic, and in some cases, nonlawyers. My search was at the same time fascinating and frustrating. There is a great deal more written material on the history of the law in our area than there is with respect to the people who were our forebears in the practice of the law. Particularly in the area of trust law, the emphasis in the treatises has been on the beginning of trusts, what a trust involved, and how it related to serving needs that developed over time; but virtually nothing with respect to the identity and description of the trustees. For example, a book on the history of the trust in Roman times never mentions who the trustees were, how they were chosen, or what their profession was. Since we know that lawyers have long served as trustees of private trusts, it occurred to me that history of our profession would be well documented. Only with rare exceptions was there anything helpful regarding lawyers as trustees. As we proceed, it will become apparent that as much as things change, much remains the same.