Expressing Sincere Gratitude in Writing: A Modest Step Towards Being a Better and More Effective Lawyer

In my antique desk, at the far back of the big hard-to-open drawer, sits a large brown envelope. The envelope holds about forty years’ worth of thank-you notes to me. Some from clients. Some from coworkers.

Some from students. Why do I keep them? Maybe I will be able to answer that question by the time I finish writing this Article. As I write this Introduction, I’m not sure.

I don’t specifically remember each card or letter, but a couple do come to mind. They do so with blazing clarity. One is from my high school English teacher, Mrs. Severns. She wrote me this letter some twenty years after I took her Senior writing class when we reconnected working together on a committee for a prairie restoration project at our high school.