In Honor of Professor Lawrence Iannotti

Abstract

Larry Iannotti embodies a combination of skills and virtues that is more unique than rare. A truly successful trial lawyer, he left the practice of law at an age when many would have thought retirement and relaxation would be appropriate. He, instead, went back to school to train himself to become a law teacher. And what a teacher he has been! How has he managed to be the kind of educator that he is, the kind of mentor most of us spend all our lives trying to become? The secret is that this is what Larry has always been, even in his youth. Teaching law at Cumberland has simply allowed him to put in a new context what has always mattered in his life. I have known Larry since we were kids in New Haven—in the Boy Scouts. We were in different and "rival" troops. Mine was sponsored by an old New Haven church and had in it mostly children of wealthy families and Yale professors. Larry's was sponsored by a church in what, today, we would call the inner city, and drew kids from first- and second-generation immigrant families. The fact of the matter is that his was the better troop. It was so because of their great Scoutmaster and because of Larry, who knew what it meant to teach, both by example and in more traditional ways.