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The New Jersey State Bar Foundation recently presented Ronald S. Levitt ’65 with its Volunteer of the Year Award for his work with the state’s high school mock trial program, and for his involvement with the first American Mock Trial Invitational competition, held in May at the University of North Carolina.
Levitt has been a member of the bar foundation’s Mock Trial Committee for more than 10 years and has chaired the panel since 2003.
“It has been a labor of love and very rewarding,” he says.
Levitt has been practicing law, primarily civil litigation, since receiving his law degree from Seton Hall in 1968. Before that, he was an English major at Lafayette, where he first began to develop the self-assurance and attention to language he would need in his profession. Levitt is a shareholder and senior partner in a large law firm, primarily handling cases concerning product liability and construction defects.
“Lafayette gave me the confidence and ideas necessary to be prepared for a world totally different from that which I had expected,” he says. “Dr. William W. Watt, my English professor, taught me the value of language, and to accurately and succinctly express my ideas and my clients’ desires. Mr.Minott Coombs, my drama professor, taught me how to act, and I learned the value of drama to a life well-spent.”
He believes his profession fills a valuable and necessary role in society.
“When Shakespeare wrote of killing all the lawyers in King Henry VI, he was acknowledging the worthiness of the profession by saying that if society wants chaos, anarchy, and lawlessness, it should get rid of the lawyers — he acknowledged lawyers as protectors of the truth,” he says.
Levitt’s involvement with the mock trial committee, his 38-year marriage and two sons, and his love of drama, music, and continuing education have combined to teach him that there is more to life than work.
“If you are lucky enough to succeed in doing something tolerably better than your fellow man, you have an obligation to pass that ability, experience, and/or knowledge on to the next generation,” he says.