An aptitude for math led the young Ronald Domsky to study finance and become a Certified Public Accountant. After being told that a law degree would make him more valuable to clients and employers, he earned a JD. He was successful in practice. He joined the adjunct faculty at The John Marshall Law School.
And in 1965, when he became the fifth full-time faculty member at John Marshall, Domsky told Dean Noble Lee that he planned to teach for only three years and then return to practicing law. Somehow those three years turned into 47-and-counting, and the likelihood of a return to private practice became progressively slimmer and then disappeared.
What kept him at John Marshall, when he could have made a lot more money by returning to the private sector? “It’s intensely gratifying,” he says, “being up on a podium with everybody listening to you, thinking you know what you’re talking about. I’ve enjoyed the admiration.” When he elaborates a bit on his willing confinement in academia, it becomes clear it’s not a one-way street for Domsky. “It’s wonderful to be able to teach young people. In particular, I like to allay the fears of students who are scared of dealing with numbers,” he says.
Scared of dealing with numbers has never been a problem for him. Domsky’s mother had a math degree from Northwestern, and used to give him and his two older siblings math problems as a challenging game. “I skipped third grade,” he recalls, “because my mother took me to see the school superintendent and I did some math problems for him. That was all it took.”
Domsky worked for the public accounting firms Coopers & Lybrand and Alexander Grant & Co., and began teaching tax courses at John Marshall as an adjunct in 1962. “I’ve always appreciated the opportunity to teach in the subject areas where I practiced,” he says. “Tax intrigued me. You’re engaged in a game, trying to legally minimize tax liability. It’s you versus the government. Your success is quantifiable, and clients are appreciative. It’s not like a divorce, where you typically end up with two unhappy clients.”
Prior to the establishment of Centers for Excellence, John Marshall had a Graduate Division, and Domsky directed the Graduate Tax Program for 25 years. Associate Dean Kathryn Kennedy, director of the Center for Tax Law and Employee Benefits, was originally hired by Domsky as an adjunct in the tax area. Domsky is very pleased with the success of the Center under Kennedy’s leadership.
“When I started teaching here,” he says, “we had open admissions. If you had three years of college, you could get in. There were no LSATs. So overall, we enroll better quality students now. And, of course, with open admissions you got a very high attrition rate, which we don’t have these days. But my basic idea remains unchanged: Anyone willing to work hard enough can make it through law school. Students who don’t succeed now are in the same boat as the kids who flunked out in the’60s and ’70s—they aren’t willing to work hard enough.”
When asked about the possibility of retirement, Domsky admits to some uneasiness about the possibility of “vegetating.” “I love what I’m doing,” he says. “I don’t have any hobbies that take a lot of time, and I enjoy the academic atmosphere and my colleagues. This is intellectually stimulating; I enjoy the give-and-take with my students and the other professors. Teaching here keeps me off the street and out of mischief!”
“I’d like to be remembered as a tough but fair teacher who made classes enjoyable and who allayed the fear of numbers for some people,” Domsky offers by way of a summary. “The most gratifying moments have been when a student tells me they thought they hated tax, but then they took my class, and they got into it, and now they’re going to pursue it as a career. I’ve had students come back and tell me, ‘you changed my life.’ You can’t beat that.”