DECEMBER 16, 2025 – Last week I received a new assignment from a favorite business client—the kind that sends good work and allows me to interact with really good people. Without exception, they’re smart, respectful, conscientious, reasonable, interesting, and in the motivational department, appreciative.
This latest assignment involved the threshold task of reviewing documents, starting with a 156-page loan agreement in the form of a pdf file. In the world of securitized lending, especially, the Golden Rule is writ large across the face of every page. The Golden Rule is not what you learned in your religious education. No, it’s, “The party with the gold makes the rules.” Nevertheless, for your client to avail itself of the best possible loan pricing the market has to offer, you need to ensure there aren’t any land mines buried among the 50,000 words stating the terms and conditions of the loan that your client wishes to assume (along with acquisition of the investment property that secures repayment of the loan). The heavier lifting then follows: rendering a legal opinion as to your client’s authorization to enter into the transaction and the enforceability of the documents governing the loan and its assumption.
As I reached the light on the other side of the virtual forest of documentation, I encountered an exhibit to an exhibit to a schedule. The subject instrument was a copy of a “Declaration of Covenants and Restrictions,” drafted and filed in 2002, and affecting the collateral for the loan my client intends to assume.[1] Under Minnesota law, every real estate instrument submitted for recording must contain, among other things, the name and address of the draftsperson of the document. This required information is usually inserted in the lower lefthand corner of the signature and acknowledgment page.
Upon reaching the signature/acknowledge page of the “Declaration,” I scrolled quickly through it; for my purposes, scrutiny was unnecessary. As the page ran up my screen, however, the name of the draftsman caught my eye: “Harry McPeak/Assistant Ramsey County Attorney.”
Harry McPeak! Was that the same Harry McPeak who served as the instructor of my legal writing class my first year of law school in the fall of 1976?
The question returned to my thoughts hours later, after I’d applied a new Lidocaine patch to Beth’s bruised ribs and addressed her other wants and needs before she settled down for the night.
My online search produced a Linkedin hit for one “Harry McPeak.” His information squared with the probability that the Harry McPeak who’d drafted the “exhibit to the exhibit to the schedule” that was comprised by the 156-loan document I’d reviewed and the Harry McPeak who’d been my legal writing instructor in law school were one and the same. The Linkedin version was still an attorney in the civil division of the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office; his tenure there was 50 years, 1 month; he’d graduated from Notre Dame University in 1967; from William Mitchell School of Law in 1975. This meant he was only one year out of law school when he taught my legal writing class.
At the time, however, he seemed much, much older—by at least a decade—than us callow students. His countenance was grave, if not yet aged enough to project full-bore gravitas. I don’t remember that he ever broke a smile or allowed a hint of humor. In fact, I don’t remember a thing about what he might’ve taught us. What I’ll never forget, however, is the antic by which he introduced himself on the first day of class—and commenced every single session thereafter.
Just before his grand entrance, we fanned ourselves against the heat in the non-air-conditioned classroom on that late day in August, 1976. No one seemed to know a thing about our legal writing professor except the rumor that he worked in the Office of the St. Paul City Attorney, and even that turned out to be wrong (he worked in the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office). When he finally arrived, he strode to the wooden desk at the front of the room, put down his over-stuffed soft leather briefcase and peeled off his suit coat. In his dress shirt and high-waisted pants, he now looked very much like a huge pear, and for the rest of the semester, I thought of him as “Harry McPear.” I was sitting at the end of the row, which allowed me to see his shoes as he’d entered the room from the side entrance. They had thick rubber soles—suitable, I thought, for cushioning his feet against the weight they had to bear.
Without saying a word—or allowing a smile—“Professor McPear” draped his suit coat over the desk, then turned to the blackboard. With the authority of a far more senior member of the faculty, he snatched a piece of chalk off the tray and proceeded to scrawl noisily across the board, “There is no justice in this world.”
In the silence that followed, I could hear students shifting their feet nervously under their seats. I think most of us expected a lecture, or at least some elevated comments, on the subject written boldly in front of our class. But nothing came of it—upon our initial exposure to the maxim or on any other occasion throughout the semester. Yet, like a dog marking his territory, before every class session, Harry McPeak wrote his maxim across the chalkboard.
The conviction with which he wielded the chalk coupled with his unsmiling face, made me wonder what battles, challenges, legal confrontations had turned him into a cynic—even more of one than the crusty old Professor Maynard Pirsig[2], who taught criminal procedure. Only years later—well into my career—did I question the propriety of imposing that cynicism on a group of eager law students ready to learn the law so that they could fight for justice. But by that time I had experienced enough “injustice” in the world to know the truth in what Harry McPeak was trying to tell us.
I wonder what he thinks of the world today. I’m guessing he’s as appalled by the Trump regime and its contempt for the law as are most lawyers I know—at least the ones who haven’t sold their souls, ethics, principles, and morality in exchange for self-aggrandizement. As I consider the slogan that defined Harry McPeak for us legal writing students, I regret that he never went beyond it. Having introduced the concept—however arguable—he put the chalk down, dusted his hands and began his instruction.
If you accept the premise that “There is no justice in this world,” what then were we doing in law school? What were we called to do once we’d earned our degrees? I should’ve confronted him after class one day, but I never did, and my failure to do so could well reside among my regrets—if I were the sort who retains such negative energy.
If I were to teach law school, however, I’d write the slogan and tell the story of Harry McPeak. But then I’d open up the class to questions, debate, and above all—just plain thinking hard about the matter. I’d explain how concepts and constructs that I once thought were so impervious to change are far more fluid than the doctrine and dogma urged upon us allow. I’d encourage the students to stretch their minds and question their assumptions.
But perhaps I’d start with the question, “What is justice, anyway?” Or better yet, “Why are you here?”
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© 2025 by Eric Nilsson
[1] The Declaration imposes certain rent restrictions on the HUD-subsidized apartment complex on the property (collateral).
[2] A storied professor along the lines of Professor Kingman in the movie Paper Chase. Professor Pirsig also happened to be the father of Maynard Jr., author of the best-seller, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
