Okay, this is the fourth interview in the Raymond Goetz oral history project, and it
is February 16, 2022.
Could you tell us who you are, please?
My name is John Lungstrom, 1970 graduate of the University of Kansas School of Law, former
student of Professor Raymond Goetz, as well as a colleague of Professor Goetz on the faculty
where I taught as an adjunct for many, many years, 30 some years.
Okay, thank you.
When did you first meet Ray Goetz?
I met Ray as a first year student.
He was my contract's professor.
So whenever our first day of class was, I met Professor Goetz.
So that's when our relationship began.
Had you heard anything about Professor Goetz before you saw him that first day of class?
Not really.
It was so soon in the beginning of law school that I really, you know, I didn't know anything
about him other than I knew that he had been a practitioner at Seyfried Shaw and had decided
to leave the practice to become a law professor.
And that's maybe I knew that he was a Socratic Method teacher, but that's about it.
As we sit here today, what do you recall your first impression of Professor Goetz?
Absolutely.
It was very striking.
He, of course, was a consummate gentleman, always impeccably dressed in business attire,
which in those days, 1960s was different than business attire today.
And he was very polite, but yet he was quite firm in letting us know that we needed to
be prepared for his class.
And he was going to put us through our paces, appropriately so.
And one of the most striking things from that first class that a lot of us always used to
kind of talk about and kid about was the first thing he did was come in and write on the
board, Pachta sunt servanda, which in Latin is promises should be kept.
And that was his starting point to discuss why do we enforce certain promises and why
do we not enforce others?
And so why do some things become contracts subject to legal ramifications and otherwise?
But the use of that Latin phrase, which I think maybe Latin had been a little more commonly
used in law school days gone by, but by even 1967, that was not so much the case.
So that was something that we took note of very early on, that he had an old school flavor
to him in that particular respect.
And he was a total devotee of the Socratic method.
I don't believe in all the classes I took from Ray that he ever answered a question.
That may be an exaggeration.
He might have answered one along the line.
But generally speaking, he wanted you to figure out the answer.
If you had a question, he'd turn it back on you with some appropriate way to get you to
think about it and come up with an answer.
He used a lightning strike method, which I think is really good because you had to be
on your toes every class, not just wait for the boulder to roll on you.
And so you came to his class very well prepared.
Staying on that for a second.
Do you remember anyone who had the misfortune of being ill prepared or unprepared?
Yes.
And he was not demeaning.
It wasn't like Professor Kingsfield on the paper chase.
But it certainly made you feel uncomfortable.
It made you feel uncomfortable for the person who was unprepared too, because obviously
the teacher was, shall we say, at the least bit disappointed in the student for not being
prepared.
And eventually he would let the person off the hook, indicating, I just need to pass
on this.
But again, he was tough, but not in a way that was designed, in my view at least, to
make people feel bad rather than to incentivize them to be prepared next time.
Which classes other than contracts did you take from Professor Gasp?
I took anything he would teach.
He was one of, if not my most favorite teacher.
I took both contracts one and two from him.
I took labor law one and two.
He had an arbitration class.
And he also, this was kind of funny in a sense, because he taught evidence one time.
And maybe more than that, but it may have been only once, because he said he was really
pretty ill-prepared to teach evidence.
But he did, and that's when I happened to take it.
And his Socratic approach to teaching evidence, he didn't find quite as satisfactory, because
it's so rule-based that he just found it tougher to teach.
He was also the advisor, one of the two advisors to the law review.
I was the editor-in-chief my third year.
So I interacted with Ray in that capacity, as well as the classes I took from him.
So what was it like interacting with him as editor-in-chief of the law review?
Well, he, again, it was his style was so much to make you think about things, as opposed
to coming in and saying, here's how you need to do it, or here's the way it's expected.
His approach was very collegial, and I guess is the right word, and collaborative.
I'm searching for maybe the appropriate contemporary expression.
But he was good to work with in that respect, and wanted to make sure that as a student-run
organization, that in fact, the students were making the calls.
And his co-advisor, Martin Dickinson, had the same approach, very much supporting the
student-run aspect of the law review.
Did you and your fellow students ever discuss Professor Goetz's teaching style?
Oh, yeah.
Because he was so much the most committed to the Socratic method, we definitely talked
about it a lot.
And some students, frankly, didn't like that.
Some students just wanted the professor to sit up there and tell them what the rules of law were.
Other students thought it was fascinating.
I actually thought the first year of law school was really interesting, and I really enjoyed it.
Not very many people say that, but it was so different from undergraduate school, which had been largely
lecture-based and some discussion groups and stuff.
But not only the different subject matter, but learning how to utilize the legal process, if you will,
reasoning by analogy and trying to figure out what the result might be with different sets of facts and so forth.
And his Socratic method was something that some of us thought was great in that respect to get us to really understand that.
One of the things about contracts, as taught by Professor Goetz and I hope has taught by me, was that it did give a real
introduction into this legal thinking and the legal analysis process, because contracts being, especially in the
60s, there had been so much statutory revision since then.
But even then, the UCC was relatively new, let alone some of the things that have come since then.
And contracts one and contracts two were entirely common law-based courses.
We had separate courses that dealt with the Uniform Commercial Code.
And so there was a perfect way to think about how the law develops through judges looking at differences in facts and how that might affect a way in which a rule might develop on the one hand or how it might be applied on the other.
So, like I say, for some of us, we really thought it was great.
I have to say that there were students who were very concerned about being able to be prepared enough to withstand a Socratic give and take, and some who just wanted to be told the rules.
But for many of us, I think we really appreciate his style a lot.
Thank you.
And either as your role as a student or on the law review, did Professor Goetz ever invite you and other students to his home?
That was a real high point, of course.
He, really alone among the faculty at that time, had this practice of inviting his classes in small groups.
Of course, you know, there were in my class in law school was numbered around 100 roughly.
So half of them had professors, half of us had Professor Goetz.
And so in groups of maybe 10 or so with spouses, he would have have us over once during the during the year.
He lived in this beautiful home in Lennard Street that was just like walking into an art gallery.
And of course, his epitome of gentlemanliness, his welcomeness as a host, and Moe was, in those days, was an excellent hostess as well.
It just it was something that really the students loved.
It's something that I utilized later.
Early when I first started teaching contracts, I was teaching large first year contracts classes.
I had maybe by that time the law school about doubled in size.
I had sometimes 90 or 100 students.
It was it was a part time thing.
I was a practicing lawyer and I just didn't I just didn't do that.
So my home was not as well suited as right for that.
It was a very open, big old home that he lived in.
But later in my tenure as a adjunct faculty member, I taught small sections of a advanced contracts class, as it was called.
It really was more contracts three, if you will, because by then the UCC classes were well, the Article Two class, at least, was no longer a separate class.
And so Article Two was taught as part of contracts, the basic contracts classes.
So some of the aspects of contracts like third party beneficiary and assignment delegation and things like that weren't covered in the first year curriculum and contracts like they had been back in the old days.
So anyway, I taught this third year, this class mainly for third year students that kind of filled some of the gaps in contracts and went into some drafting things and stuff like that.
And there, I, you know, having recalled, Ray's doing this with his first year students and finding with a small section.
And if I did it the right time of year, I could do it on her deck or something.
I followed along with that by having pizza parties for my students.
But going to Ray's house was just an absolute wonderful thing to get to do.
Did you, when you, when did you start teaching as an adjunct faculty member?
I got out of the Army and returned to Lawrence in December of 1972.
And somewhere not too long after I got back, Professor Earl Schertz, who was the other full time contracts professor, and was scheduled to teach in the summer school,
had a very serious stroke from which he never really fully recovered.
And Martin Dickinson was to be in law school at the time, knew I was back and therefore wasn't as busy as maybe some other people would be relatively back, knew back in town, asked if I'd be willing to teach that class in summer school.
So I began in the summer school session of 1973. And because Professor Schertz did not recover well enough to resume his teaching duties, I continued teaching those first year contracts classes for many years until they finally hired a full time person to come in, at which point I started teaching evidence and some other things as well.
So that was 73 was when I started.
So, when you got there and started teaching, did you go to Professor Getz to talk about how to teach contracts at all?
Definitely. I mean, you know, of course, again, with Ray's personality, you know, if you would go ask Ray, how should I teach contracts, he would say, well, you know, you know how to teach contracts, you've had the class, you know, he was,
he would not really give you direction as much as some maybe a little bit of guidance. But we did collaborate. We sometimes, my recollection is we sometimes are collaborated in preparing our final exam. So we both give the same final because we covered the same material, we covered it the same way.
I clearly wasn't as proficient at the Socratic method as Ray. So I called what I did a modified Socratic method. But we covered the same material with pretty much the same take on it. And so it was something that was easy for us to kind of jointly come up with a final exam on.
And I wasn't at the law school full time, of course, I had always had an office I could go to, but I fairly quickly became pretty busy as a practitioner. And so I didn't really hang out at the law school other than just right before or after class or something we needed to see a student or, but I certainly went to Ray and talk to him about it.
Not before that summer school, actually, but once it looked like I was going to be doing it for a little bit of a longer call.
Since you weren't, you know, you were adjunct, but did you get a sense of how Ray was in terms of collegiality on the faculty generally?
Not really. Again, I didn't go to faculty meetings or things like that. I would be shocked if he were anything other than very collegial. But later on in my time as an adjunct, in lieu of getting a salary raise, the then dean gave me the title of visiting professor from the judiciary with the full entitlement to attend faculty meetings.
I went to one and decided that was a privilege I could do without the exercise.
I really can't speak to that too much.
I had to ask. So did you ever have Ray as an arbitrator?
No, I never did. And arbitration is something we did talk about because it was when I was teaching and in contact with Ray that he took on the major league baseball arbitration.
And of course, I'm a big Europe baseball fan and I thought this was just fascinating that he was going to be doing this baseball arbitration. So did he.
He had a little bit of a little kid's excitement about, gee, I'm going to get to do this, which was fun to see in Ray because he was just such a gentleman and so kind of straight-laced in many ways. But he really did like that.
Did he explain anything about it in particular?
Other than the little boy kind of nature about it, I get that.
Yeah, no, not really. I mean, yeah, I didn't want to pry into what he was doing and why he was doing it, you know, any more than he wanted to just share with me.
But, you know, he was a great believer in arbitration and, of course, growing out of the labor side of things that he had grown up practicing and then teaching.
This was something that I think he felt that he had a special interest in.
Yeah, so he as baseball arbitrator, he decided some really big cases as the main grievance arbitrator for baseball.
And I'm sure his personality made him an excellent arbitrator as well.
Yeah, so he as baseball arbitrator, he decided some really big cases as the main grievance arbitrator for baseball.
And one of them was a drug case involving Ferguson Jenkins. Did you ever happen to either talk about that or any of his other cases?
I never talked about any of these particular cases.
Again, just kind of out of professional
difference.
I just didn't feel like that was necessarily appropriate for me to do.
It's a little bit like, you know, I talked to some of my judicial colleagues about their cases, but if I were a lawyer who knew one of my colleagues, I probably wouldn't be sitting around talking to them about one of their cases.
So that was more how I felt about it was that it wasn't really something I was very inclined to want to do.
Did you ever serve or interact with Ray in any of his professional organizational capacities? For instance, he was the secretary of the collective bargaining committee of the ABA's section.
No, I did not.
He did have, he had a definite impact on my interest in terms of legal profession. Let me just tell you a little bit about that.
One day, when I was at the law review office as the chief, I was there in like jeans and casual shirt of some kind doing some work and Ray came in and said, you know, I really need you to do me a favor.
We have this fellow from Laitham and Watkins who's a law grad who's here interviewing and nobody has signed up for Laitham and Watkins.
It's in Los Angeles.
He really touted the law firm. They said, you know, nobody wants nobody here is just in Los Angeles.
Would you mind going and interviewing with us?
Well, I'm not dressed for an interview. I mean, it doesn't matter. We just need somebody to go have this interview.
And so I saw a shirt. Yeah, I'll be happy to do that.
Well, making a very long story short, they invited me to come out to LA for an interview.
And when I agreed to do that, Ray said, well, you also ought to interview at Paul Hastings and Genoske and Walker because Leonard Genoske was sort of the dean of the national really defense labor bar and somebody Ray thought very highly of.
And that he knew I had an interest in labor law and that I should talk to Paul Hastings as well.
So I interviewed with both of those firms, including with Mr. Genoske.
And ultimately, to great surprise of myself, as well as other people, including my family, I wound up accepting the offer and went to Laitham and Watkins.
And I did most of my work, or at least much of it in the labor law department.
And had I gone back to Laitham, which I might well have done, other than back to my wife and I just didn't see raising a family in Los Angeles, frankly, although I have a very fond feeling about LA, but we didn't really think that's what we wanted to do.
But we enjoyed our time at LMW.
And had I gone back to Los Angeles, I undoubtedly would have sought to be a part of the labor group there.
And in those days, the labor group wasn't like it is now where so much of it is employment discrimination cases.
I mean, this was, you know, negotiating with the unions and that sort of thing.
And one of our partners out there at Laitham and Watkins, a great labor lawyer, was renowned for his going into these meetings with the labor bosses.
And, you know, this one guy puts a gun on the table at one point.
So the Laitham and Watkins lawyer, who was about half the size of this other fellow, you know, says, you know, get that gun off the table if you want to go forward.
So those were discussed in the old days of labor stuff.
And I thought it was kind of exciting and something that I definitely would have wanted to pursue had I had I gone back to LA.
By the time I got back here, we moved to Lawrence because we wanted to live in that community.
And I joined a small law firm, just a couple of us, three or four at the time.
And, you know, there was labor law to be done.
So I wound up doing a pretty general practice with a focus on litigation and also planning and zoning work, which is another form of advocacy, of course, but not labor.
How long were you a labor lawyer?
I was only at Laitham for about a year. I had a military commitment. They knew that when I went out there.
That's one of the reasons I agreed to go out there was to give it a look because I knew I was going to be leaving in a relatively short period of time.
And so the commitment was transitory to begin with.
Understanding was, I mean, I was an actual associate. I wasn't a summer associate. I was an actual associate.
But they knew that maybe I would kind of come back and maybe I wasn't.
By the time we left L.A., we really thought we were coming back.
But once we got away and sort of got our head around what we wanted to do with our life, my wife and I decided we'd rather live in a place like Lawrence than Los Angeles.
So my tenure as a labor lawyer was very brief.
Speaking of your service in the Army, of course, Ray served in the Navy during World War II. Did you ever talk to him about his service?
You know, he mentioned that from time to time, even mentioned in class from time to time.
But we never did. I think he I joined ROTC when I was in law school.
So he knew I had and he knew I had done that. It was a time of the Vietnam War.
And I was concerned about being able to finish my legal education and then do my service sort of on my own schedule, so to speak.
So I in lieu of I didn't know what my draft number was. I just thought I wanted to plan for it. So I go to ROTC.
But we never we never talked about that side of it.
One thing, by the way, I need to double back on because we talked about the students discussing Ray's teaching style.
And one of the points I made earlier was his use of things like Latin and so forth were curiosity, shall I say, that the number of my classmates.
So he tended sometimes to use phrases or analogies or things like that that were not necessarily of the late 60s variety.
And one of the references he made one day was.
So I don't remember the context now, but something about being in the rumble seat of the car.
Well, of course, most of us are the one that's a rumble seat.
After that, he became informally among a number of us known as rumble seat, which actually probably was really a bad misnomer for Professor Gatz.
But I couldn't let that go by because there were definitely those of us who thought of him in those terms.
He also I have another anecdote like that that has always stuck with me was when we were talking about unfair labor practices.
And he said, you know, this is this is giving an unfair labor practice against you if you're an employer isn't something you'd be embarrassed at the bar or the country club to talk about.
And again, that just got one of those references that really sort of stuck with me over the years about a way in which Professor Gatz described the situation.
Did anybody ever tell Professor Gatz that you've been referred to as rumble seat, right?
I don't think so.
Other than the times that you that you went when you went to his house when you were in contracts and any other classes.
Did you socialize with Ray and his wife, Mo, at all later?
No, not not. No. I mean, there was enough of a generational difference there that, you know, that just wasn't something that occurred.
I'm sure there were lost school functions, you know, that sort of thing, but nothing what I call truly a social type relationship.
Right. Did you mentioned his fabulous art collection.
So did you ever talk to him about art or he was also interested in literature, I think.
So those things you ever talked to him about those things?
No, other than in connection with visiting his house.
My interest, I've actually developed over the years, an interest in art that was as far more than it was back then.
You know, I was pretty illiterate when it came to art at that juncture and going into Ray's house, seeing all the things that he had that I could not have carried on an intelligent conversation about what was on his walls and elsewhere.
But I wish I had a chance to go back and have a do over on that.
Yeah, thank you.
Okay.
When was the last time you saw Ray?
I don't, you know, I don't have a specific recollection.
I don't know, you know, once, once I took this job.
Yeah, I was, I still taught at the law school clear up until I took senior status in 2010, which then I stopped teaching as well just because I wanted to have as much flexibility in my schedule as I could.
But once I was in this job, I spent even less time around the law school because I, you know, I just kind of had to work in my teaching and and be gone.
And then of course we retired.
So I really lost touch with Professor Katz.
Do you recall your feelings when you heard that he had died.
Well, it was a it was one of those milestone kind of things because he was so important to me as a professor as a someone who I would have liked to have been able to emulate at least to a small degree.
I was someone who had had an impact on my career, obviously by my going to that interview with Lake Milwaukee.
I really, that was an important thing for me to have to have done.
So I was one of those, boy, you know, that's the, that's the passing of a giant and somebody who's meant a lot in my life.
Yeah.
Thank you for that.
Just a wrap up question, you know, are there any other memories of Ray gets that you think we haven't discussed.
I think, I think we've covered it here pretty well.
So, your questions have led me down the path that I think we needed to go. Great. Thank you. Let me stop the recording.