Many people are quick to lament the growing numbers of lawyers in the United States and throughout the world, he said.

Clark, who wrote an article entitled "Why So Many Lawyers? Are They Good or Bad?" for the Fordham Law Review, said that lawyers have a crucial and constructive role in society that many do not acknowledge.

"To understand this madly optimistic view," Clark said, "you must understand what lawyers do."

He depicted lawyers as those who define relationships between the spheres of society, maintain a normative order, resolve disputes, litigate and help create society's laws.

Purely analytical reasoning does not make for legal success, he said. To be a truly effective lawyer, Clark told his audience, "to get there and get there right, you have to have negotiating skills."

Many of several hundred guests in attendance at the dinner were participating in PON's weekend-long symposium on dispute resolution and legal practice, called "The Lawyer as Problem Solver."

The PON is an intercollegiate organization committed "to improving the theory and practice of negotiation and dispute resolution," according to their website.

Clark said that Mitchell's speech made him even more certain that the award was well-given.