He may be retiring, but that does not mean his work has stopped. In fact, he will continue to publish, do administrative and advisory work, and do all the nice things that accompany these activities. In that sense, he is a professor like many others. Nevertheless, few would call their emeritate a new start like Leonard Verburg does. And just like his retirement, his career hasn’t been ordinary either. He was a lawyer in the Amsterdam financial district (Zuidas) for thirty years and has been a partner at Allen & Overy since 2000. In addition to that demanding job, he began writing a dissertation and in 2007 was appointed professor for one day a week at the Centre for Professional Legal Education of Radboud University’s Faculty of Law. Finally, in 2010, he switched to academia fulltime and became a full professor of Social law. “In essence, I’ve had two careers. And that’s how I imagined it.”
Did you already chart that path as a student?!
“Oh no. I started thinking about it when I was 50. I said to myself: at 75, I want to look back on a career in which I got everything I could out of it. Just pursuing a profession in law can keep you going year after year. It is a wonderful revenue model, but it will get monotonous at some point. Merely defending the interests of one party started to have too little added value for my life, I wanted to work at a higher level of abstraction. As a lawyer, it is your job to be biased, whereas an academic should not be. A lawyer's perspective is that of his client, but an academic's perspective is the pursuit of truth.”
Those are big words.
“Truth has many facets. Especially in law, because human behaviour has countless facets as well. If you want to approximate what is true, it is not enough to look from the perspective of one party. You need to look at every perspective and strive for structure: what is really true?”
Has science always been the second dream career?
“Not at first. I did think: it must be beneficial to my reputation. It had to be work that suited someone at the very top of the legal profession. My other requirement was that I had to be able to make contribution to society at large. That is possible in science, because that involves organising and making connections with the aim that society, namely the Netherlands Ltd., benefits from it.”
Like your former colleague Ferdinand Grapperhaus, you could also have gone for a ministerial position.
“Few are asked. And to be honest: it seems interesting, but not always. We did look at each other’s positions and I often thought: sometimes he has the best job and sometimes I have the best job of us two. In any case, science has brought me great pleasure.”
No quiet hope of a phone call from the cabinet formator now that you are free?
“If such a request were to come, it is something that, if you think you can do it – and I do – you shouldn’t turn it down. Also, there are enough difficult, socially relevant dossiers and such dossiers fascinate me. So I always have my phone at hand...”
Has the academy also given you other insights?
“I think that is a difficult question. The answer is yes, of course, but giving examples ... My thinking has changed, more in the direction of: What can I still contribute to society? That sounds pompous, but that's how it is. I wanted to pass on the stories and experiences I had gained in practice to society through publications. It’s not only altruistic - I also enjoy it. That is why I started publishing at a later age, partly to be of service to judges. They often have limited time to adjudicate a case and it is then useful to have a certain concept clarified by knowledge gained through experience. What I had not realised, but have come to realise more and more, is that I can also pass on my knowledge to students.”
What did you want to teach students?
“I enjoyed showing them the bag of tricks lawyers use, but I also always said: you mustn't use these. My definition of a good lawyer is: someone who sees through and understands all the shenanigans, but does not use them himself. That is the only way to build a good reputation and to be viewed more favourably by judges. This does not mean you have to be a pushover; you can be tough. You can still say with an open mind that you will pay someone only ten euros instead of fifteen. And of course you want to win. I had a high score. I want to be remembered as a lawyer who did not allow others to eat his lunch, but who was fair in his business dealings.”
What do you see as important developments in employment law?
“In the courtroom, the pressure for more empathy, for looking more at the other party's interests, has increased. It used to be: if the other party said yes, then your starting position was to say no. That was the normal way of litigating. Procedural law has grown towards providing more information and, as parties, together with the judge, seeking to bring the case to a successful conclusion. It has been like that for a long time in merger and acquisition law, where the emphasis is on orchestrating a deal. As a lawyer, you mustn't unnecessarily upset the balance. I started out as a trial lawyer, hard on the case, and added the skills of the commercial lawyer. I used to say with a grin: some lawyers shouldn't be put in court, because they are not used to being contradicted, but conversely, you shouldn't put some brawlers from the courtroom in the commercial sphere, because that is a completely different ball game. I have been able to practice both disciplines and that has fortified me as a person.”
What contribution have you made to society as a professor? How has the Netherlands Ltd. improved through your work?
“I have publications on many topics, including the insider-outsider problem, the growing contradiction between fixed and flex employment contracts. The 1999 legal amendment gave employers more room for flex contracts and they have used it to the fullest. There is no country in the OECD where the percentage of flex and self-employed workers is so high. The proposition that the balance between fixed and flex is moving in the wrong direction was the thesis of my inaugural lecture. I also wrote a non-government bill about relaxing the dismissal law for D66 MP Koser Kaya. Unfortunately, it never made it to the Lower House. My contribution is that I helped put the issue on the agenda. I am not disappointed that little or nothing has been done about it. However, I would’ve been disappointed if I had never spoken up about it, so I can face myself with a clean conscience. Ultimately, it is a political decision. I mean, I do have my own ideas about the topic, but to just share my own views wouldn’t be very academic. As an academic, you have to help gather insight into the effects of laws and regulations, and that is what I have done.”
As an academic, you can also advise politicians, right?
“Yes, but one of the things I would like to pass on to my colleagues is: be careful not to get too caught up in the politics of politics. Because politicians are not concerned with the truth, but with their own party’s political games. They often call you not to hear the best option, but to hear that what they want is reasonable and defensible. That is not the job of a professor. That problem did not arise with that bill; Koser Kaya wholly agreed with my position. I argued and still argue for a less complex dismissal law, in which flex is less flex and fixed is less fixed. If that bill had been pursued, it would have been more difficult and I would have had to ask myself whether I could play that political game as a full-time professor.”
Are there too many rules in general?
“Certainly. In our area of law, I also see an almost limitless desire for regulation in all levels of government. The volume with all laws and regulations governing social security law now fills 1,500 pages! And that’s not even counting all the case law. If we are not careful, employment law will go the same way. Keeping it simple must be the priority.”
Can you give an example?
“Take the NOW subsidy schemes, which allow employers to keep their employees employed during the lockdown. There is already discussion about whether people who have received money incorrectly should pay it back. I am surprised by this. Why should we not accept that some people have received money incorrectly? It was a sensible scheme and now it is a matter of taking your losses as a government. Because before you know it, you have a second benefits scandal. Look, people who really lied, that's something else. But the effect now is that well-intentioned people are also suffering under the yoke of auditors. I can already hear people saying: I should never have applied for it, because now I am being hounded by my accountant and I have to spend a lot of time supplying all kinds of information. The repayment requirement only adds to the already enormous bureaucratic burden. I argue for more empathy and individual justice in this kind of scheme. In that sense, the benefits affair is a good example, because it shows that excessive regulatory pressure is diametrically opposed to justice.”
What things from your academic career are you most proud of?
“I am proud of the staff from my department and the fact that I contributed four years of administrative work to the Faculty of Law. The fact that they asked me to do this was a sign for me that my transition had been a success. I am also proud that I helped put the insider-outsider problem on the agenda. And that I have allowed a generation of students to share in the great stories from the Zuidas.”
What have you been disappointed by?
“Disappointed is a big word. But when I became a professor, I thought it would be nice to do things internationally. That never happened. That is partly due to the pressure on educators, my regular participation in the national discourse and my administrative work within the faculty. But I also had some inaccurate expectations. When you start young in science, you build up an international network. I did have such a network, but mine was in the legal and business world, not in science. Is that a big deal? No, of course not. I can look back on a fantastic period. I would still recommend that full career switch at 55 to everyone. It has enriched my life enormously.”
Final words
“Make sure to incorporate breadth into your work. As an academic, you don't have to follow all the regulatory minutia, but you do have to highlight the connections and overarching concepts. Also, get acquainted with related fields of law, otherwise there is a risk of knowledge gaps. And finally: read more, publish less. It seems as if we in academia are all chasing our next publication, but hardly ever read each other's work. In your annual appraisal interview, you should not only tick how many publications you have written, but also: have you kept up with your professional literature and read a good book as well – Plato or some world literature? That intellectual side is very much needed to maintain a broad perspective.”
Text: Bea Ros. This article was first published in Radboud Magazine. Photo: Bert Beelen.