The Real Lawyer: Josh Fershee (Part 2)

Episode Summary - Part 2: Building a Supportive Legal Education Environment

In this episode, the conversation continues with Josh Fershee, Dean of Creighton Law School, who reflects on his journey from West Virginia to Omaha. He shares his experiences balancing family life with a demanding academic career, including the challenges of moving during his children's school years. He discusses his leadership approach at Creighton, emphasizing the importance of creating a supportive environment for students and faculty, such as offering daycare solutions during snow days. Josh also opens up about the unexpected challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic and the societal impact of George Floyd’s murder, and how he navigated these issues by staying true to his values. His story highlights the importance of authenticity, leadership, and fostering a community where everyone can thrive.

Stay tuned for Part 3, where Josh discusses the future of legal education and his vision for law schools in a post-pandemic world.

Transcript

Speaker 2 (00:05.07)
Welcome back to the Real Lawyer podcast. I'm your host Joyce Sophia Hsu, and you're listening to part two of my conversation with the inspiring Josh Frashe, Dean and Professor of Law at Creighton University School of Law. In this part, we pick up where we had left off in part one, and we continue to talk more about the most important values that shaped Josh's life and his career.

co-parenting and co-creating with an equally inspiring life partner, teaching, leading, showing up, and building supportive communities along the way. I hope you enjoy.

Speaker 2 (00:53.838)
So Josh, in the last episode, we started to talk about the different law schools where you had taught. And I wonder, were there special moments during those years at those schools that you look back on now and consider as defining moments, moments that really made a difference in your career path?

Yeah. mean, particularly at North Dakota, one of the things that was so great, our daughter was born there and my wife and I were both teaching and you couldn't really do daycare for kids under six months old. And we were in an opportunity with a supportive environment that we'd often have our daughter with us in the faculty suite. when Kendra would go teach, she'd drop Tessa off with me and...

I could drop Tessa back off with her. had students who would come in and, you know, if something happened that one of us couldn't be there, that, you know, I had to be away at one point and childcare fell through. So Tessa was with Kendra when she went to teach a class. And one of the students was like, give her to me. was somebody who was a non-traditional student, who was a parent. And that opportunity to have, be close to our family.

while developing our careers was really remarkable. And it's something that I've tried to replicate in my job now of creating an environment where you can be a professional and be supported at the same time. And that was really pretty great. And our kids have grown up around the universities and around the law school. They know people. And I feel really fortunate to have been to every place we've been to be a part of a

a community that looks out for one another. And to have my family to be integrated with that is, that's really been something that's been unique.

Speaker 2 (02:54.502)
I love that. It makes me think of my childhood because my mom was a high school teacher. So after school, I would always then go to her school and then I'd just be sitting in her office. And it was a shared office, I think maybe four or five teachers. And they were just kind of all my built-in babysitters.

It's great, right? It's great.

So, and I love the fact that you're saying that you try to replicate that in your current role at Creighton, right? And that's fantastic. I think it's a very progressive, enlightened way of looking at work-life balance and trying to make sure that the work is fulfilling for the people who are at the law school. So tell me what led you to Creighton and what you're doing now.

You're obviously the dean of the law school, so hopefully that gives you a lot more freedom and latitude to build out the vision that you have.

Sometimes, anyway. Yeah, that's right. mean, so this kind of links the two questions that you were asking. When we were at West Virginia, we were fortunate to work for people who were supportive of us, both personally and professionally. I served as the associate dean for faculty research there, and my wife served as the associate dean for academic affairs, which is probably exceedingly rare to have a married couple in administrative roles like that.

Speaker 1 (04:35.118)
But it worked really well for us. you know, how we ended up at Creighton is kind of a bizarre story too, in the sense that in 2017, my wife, while working full time and teaching and being an associate dean, decided to run for Congress in West Virginia. And so she ended up running and ended up winning a contested primary where we were outraised substantially. But she was, you know.

very effective at getting out and getting to know people. I think we raised $40,000 or maybe $50,000. And the person that we were running against had well over $400,000. Wow. And Kendra won by 10 points. And so now we're doing a general election. And I was really proud of the work. And it was a great opportunity for our kids to see their mom do important work. We weren't able to raise enough money to really be competitive.

Democrats haven't been very competitive, if you're not named Joe Manstrand in the last eight or nine years in West Virginia. But it was a great opportunity, a great experience. And that's a long way of saying how we ended up here when after the election was over, Kendra said to me, you know, that was a great experience for me. I'm glad to do it. What is it that you want to do? And I said, I think I would like to be a dean or at least explore that possibility. And so that January of

I guess, 2019, I put my hat in the ring for a couple of positions and got the opportunity to interview with Creighton and ended up getting the job. You know, it's one of those things. I've had one callback interview for a deanship and it's this one. so we ended up moving our family much faster than we anticipated. Actually, we were very connected and very invested in the community in West Virginia. But this opportunity came about.

And so we ended up leaving and coming here and my son was getting ready to start high school. My daughter was starting sixth grade. And so it was a big move for all of us to do that and a sacrifice for sure, giving up a community we really cared about and valued and just coming to an entirely new place for all four of us. But it's been a great opportunity to get here.

Speaker 2 (06:58.626)
How long have you been there now?

So this is the start of my sixth year. So we got here in 2019 and by March of 2020, we were all learning how to do things via technology. And so that was a big challenge. It has been really great. mean, it's had its ups and downs as any place does. mean, one of the things I always say is that people will say, you you didn't sign up for this when we were going through kind of the COVID challenges. And in one sense, that's true, but...

But when you choose to be a leader, think you actually are exactly, I don't know exactly that I was signing up for COVID, right? That was not on my bingo card. But I was signing up to be in difficult spots and make the decisions or help work with people to make decisions in difficult situations. You're not signing up for everything to be easy. You're signing up to make some of those decisions that can have an impact on your community and your culture. And I felt like I was ready for that. And there's been a lot of learning on the job.

claim that I've had it all figured out by any stretch. And I don't think I do even now, but it's been really a wonderful opportunity in a community of people who are committed to working together, even where they disagree on maybe what the we have a set of shared values about what our outcomes are, even if we see paths differently. And, you had asked about kind of the freedom to implement your vision, I think, to some degree, that's true. And it's really largely been on tone setting.

of what do we expect and how do we talk to one another. And I really believe in legal education, and this probably goes to a lot of other places. My goal as an administrator is to make sure that everything is as easy as possible for our students and faculty and staff, other than the work that's supposed to be hard. Law school is hard. It's challenging. It's asking you to learn in new ways and talk in new ways and write in new ways. And that should be hard.

Speaker 1 (08:57.516)
Right? If you can Google the answer, you don't need a lawyer. And we live in the gray and that should be hard, but everything else should be as easy as possible. And that means trying to help people who have daycare problems to help people if they're having a housing problem or they're having a problem with their roommate or they're having health challenges. How do we get them the connections that they need? When I first, my first year here that winter, we had a snow day and what I'd known as a parent and universities, universities don't like to close.

partly because they have students in dorms and it means you're going to have potential challenges there. And so I sent an email to our community and posted on social media and just said, you know, be safe, don't come, you know, we're open, but if you can't safely get here, don't come. If you have a daycare problem, you're welcome to bring your kids to my office because I want you to be able to go to school. And we had supportive faculty who were willing to have kids in their class if they needed to.

And we had very few takers. We had way more people say, thank you for doing this. I was able to find coverage through a friend or neighbor or husband could stay home or whatever. But it took the stress away knowing that I had an option. And that's one of the things that I think is so important is trying to create support systems. And people would say, well, what happens if 25 kids end up in your office? I said, well, that would tell us that we do have a real daycare problem.

This is a real challenge for our students that we've not been addressing. Now, I ended up with two kids who came and the person, the student was in a criminal law class and that faculty member actually was generally open to having kids in her class, but she was like, not on homicide day, no children in here. So they hung out with us and it was a good lesson. And there's a couple of things there too.

I think it was really unexpected that, you know, for whatever reason, was a gendered notion, you know, that a man would be thinking about daycare struck people, which I think is, you know, I appreciate people thinking that that's a good thing, but we should all be able to think that far through. Yeah. But also, you know, of recognizing too, it's a different offer when I make it, right? If a woman were in the same position that I were in.

Speaker 1 (11:24.738)
the expectations of women are very different. And I don't know that you could make that same offer in the same way. So I wouldn't say it's necessarily the way things should be done. It was right for me. And that was really what I've tried to do, particularly as a dean. I hope I've done it in other areas, is try to be genuine to who I am. That's my response. And when you try to replicate somebody else, it doesn't work.

Right. I think that's true as a lawyer, you know, there are people who try to be litigators and model after somebody else when it's really just you, because people trust and like genuine. And, and so it's been a good opportunity for me to learn with a community that's been, it's given me some grace when I haven't necessarily done things as smoothly or as efficiently as I would have liked, but it's been a real opportunity for me to grow and learn with people of kind of who I am and how I want to do things too.

know, trying to create an environment where we really are looking out for one another in ways that are constructive and helpful without expecting everybody to see the world the same way.

Yeah, I really love your mindset. It's very open. It's very secure, right? You were talking about someone said, well, what if too many people showed up on your doorstep, taking you up on your offer of daycare? And I think it's that kind of thought pattern that limits us, right? That prevents us from taking much needed action steps. And I especially love what you said about being real and

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (13:02.06)
You know, really being authentic to who you are in work and in life. And it's not just limited to the practice of law. It's really something that we should live by from day to day, no matter what profession we're in. It's really been wonderful talking about your, your career and your life. And I'm sure there, there have been challenges along the way. So.

Could you share with us for you what were the biggest challenges over the years and how you navigated around them or actually overcame them?

I think life creates all sorts of challenges in various spaces for us work or personally, I suppose. mean, certainly the biggest challenge was one that for all of us was when COVID hit of trying to figure out how to respond as an institution, but also as a family. What are we doing? How do we take care of this? And that was a real learning experience in a variety of ways. mean, it was...

You know, I actually had the good fortune in some ways of having responsibility. That is, I was on Zoom meetings and that was really when I learned about Zoom. think I'd only used Skype before then. But at the university level of having to do different things and figuring out how to be helpful or what to do and what not to do.

whole stretch had a number of really big challenges. We had the challenge of figuring out how to move law school online, figuring out how to support people, how to try to keep people safe. But also of that whole stretch, George Floyd's murder created all sorts of upheaval and upset. And our community was struggling like so many others. were protests and trying to connect with our community and figuring out the right thing.

Speaker 1 (15:06.84)
to do and how to be supportive of our students and of our broader community. And that's another place where people would say, should you send an email to the university or to your community? Do you talk about these hot button issues or not? I there tried to continue to be genuine to who I was and say what I was thinking. That's really been the way I've tried to approach any of these challenges is often outwardly.

of thinking, what would I need or what would I want? What do I think that I would need? Do I need to send an email to our community about something? Well, would I want to hear something from my dean or from somebody connected? And that's been fortunately a pretty good path for me, not to say that I haven't had people come back and say, you're wrong that, you know, I can't believe you view the world this way or that, you know, that's not supportive. so I, you know,

If I've come from a place of genuineness of good intent and being honest with who I am, at least in those contexts, I'm able to say, I'm sorry if I came up short for what you needed. Here's where I was coming from. This was what I, this was, this is what I intended. This is what I was trying to do. If I didn't deliver for you, help me learn and understand how I could do that. And sometimes the answer is I felt other people needed, needed something more and more people needed that. And so that's, you know, that's why I went down that.

that path. And, you know, so I think it's, it's there. It's easier in some ways, I will say, to outwardly take care of others than sometimes it is, you know, for me to recognize, well, I'm really taking on a lot of stress. I'm taking on a lot of this. And one of my challenges is I am willing to take on all of it. That is, that is how I solve problems. That is how I work. And that's not always constructive.

Right. There are times when, when that's a really big burden that becomes a personal challenge for me that I have to work through. And that's something that, you know, I over the last couple of years was taking on a lot of stress and realized I'm not being as good to myself or to my family. mean, my family tends to be who sees the worst of me and I have a great family and we love each other and I'm very fortunate with that. But if somebody's likely to get. Marked at or get a very short and.

Speaker 1 (17:32.494)
and snippy version of me, it's almost always my family, which is not great, right? And so that's where I had to look and, you know, talk, you know, get somebody to talk to you about those things. It's not your family. So you can cry to try to balance and, you know, think about how you can be a better version of you. And so that for me has been a learning experience too, of acknowledging that I'm trying to take everything on that, you know, and I say, I try to be genuine and I think I am.

but I'm not a super big person. don't put all of my feelings and emotions out there. I am very Midwest and I suppose that suits me well with where I am. And it's one of the things honestly I loved about New York and that I miss of people were much bigger and more open with all of their feelings and what they think about the world. And so that's, mean, for me that's been a...

a challenge of taking things on and how I manage those personally and being able to acknowledge, okay, I might need some help in that process too. And that continues to be a work in progress and, but of being able to talk with, with, you know, with my family about those things, that that's something that I need to continue to work on. And so in many ways, I like to think I have some things figured out and that I'm good at what I do, but it is an ongoing process at all times. And that's why, you know,

I can say to somebody, I know it's hard because I do. And how we manage things, how we think about the world and ourselves in it is never cut and dry. It's never easy when things are challenging. we're just, you I try to view it as an opportunity each day that I get to try again or do something new and be a better version of myself. But that is very much a work in progress. you know, and sometimes...

will candidly say I've not made as much progress as I'd like in some fields. And so, you know, that's when I try to remember my own advice that I give, give a lot of our students, which is show yourself some grace and recognize that you don't have to be perfect to be very good at what you're doing.

Speaker 2 (19:39.498)
Yeah, that's so well said. It's a process for all of us. I love what you said about waking up every day and seeing the day as an opportunity to grow and do new things and learn. And that to me is...

The most important thing about being alive is having that gratitude and then also having that curiosity about yourself and about life and about other people. And then what you said absolutely showing yourself grace. You obviously show a lot of grace to people who you work with and who you come into contact with. And it's equally important to show ourselves grace and compassion.

you

Speaker 2 (20:32.482)
Thank you so much for listening. I am grateful for the opportunity to have this conversation with Josh and to bear witness to the beautiful, gracious, and profoundly genuine and kind spirit that he has. Join us on Friday for the final part of our conversation where we delve deeper into Josh's perspectives on legal education.

the legal profession, and also on career development. Until then, be well and be happy.