7 Lessons from Law School

A little over two years ago, I wrote the following draft as a review of a semester-long law school internship.  At the internship, I drafted decisions for judges in the Superior Court.  Upon finding this review draft, I re-discovered kernels of wisdom that apply to being an attorney (and to life) in more ways than I could have imagined at the time I wrote it.

I present it here, in its original form of six lessons, with Number Seven as a postmortem addendum to law school and life as a lawyer.

Seven Things Your 1L Professors Never Told You (Or Maybe They Did, and You Didn’t Want to Believe Them)

First Day Of Law School

            Even after two years to get used to the idea, it still sounds intimidating:  my first day of law school.  I remember it vividly.  I dressed in an outfit I had coordinated a week earlier, down to the correct shade of earrings.  I had a perfectly organized laptop bag on one shoulder as I walked to class, admiring and taking in the details of my new campus.  From bright green and perfectly manicured lawns, the white, old-Catholic mission-style buildings overlook a panoramic view of the ocean and downtown.  I walked to class savoring this perfect little scene, determined to win at all aspects of my newfound legal career.

            My first day, I had a number of thoughts and concerns about my decision to attend law school.  I was filled with hopes and plans, reveling at how many firsts I was about to experience.  This day was the first of many firsts:  I was the first in the family to graduate high school or college or go to law school; this was my first time back in my hometown in four years; the first private school I’d ever attended; the first time I was on track for a real job and real career; and the first time I would meet my future colleagues and competitors.  Every detail had to be planned, and the plan had to be executed flawlessly.  After all, so many people have stressed the importance of first impressions, especially first impressions in law school.  I viewed this day as a make-it-or-break-it moment, a test of the fates as to whether or not I had made the right decision.

            But for all of the planning, right down to the earrings, my first day of law school was not a flawless execution.  I could not buy my textbooks because my loan had not come through yet; I got lost on campus, resulting in getting the last choice locker location and showing up to each class drenched in sweat; and the first people I met struck me as odd, eccentric, and not at all like I expected law students to be.  My hair fell out of place, the strap on my perfect bag broke, and not a single page of the assigned readings was discussed in any of my first classes.

            Throughout the entire first day, I fought back a wave of overwhelming anxiety; each flaw in my plan constituted a mini panic attack, and when I went home that night I chalked up my first day as an utter failure.  My nerves were fried over broken bag straps and ill-placed lockers.  I fought back an urge to cry on my drive home, later bemoaning to my family how I could not imagine a worse first day.  As I tucked myself in at the exact bedtime I had pre-planned in an hour-by-hour schedule made in Microsoft Excel and printed on my bathroom mirror, I vowed to myself, tomorrow will go as planned.  Tomorrow will go as planned.  I will make it happen.

First Day At A New Job

            It should sound intimidating, but I can’t recall an ounce of fear playing into my first day as a judicial intern.  After all, this was serious business; my first real job outside of law school.  No, this would not be making copies and watching other attorneys work, like my first summer job.  No, this would be my first time behind the scenes at a real court house, writing briefs for real judges, for real criminal cases, and for real attorneys.  Yet, the fresh intern who walked in on that first day had changed so radically from the newly-minted law student who stressed over broken bag straps and lockers.  The first year of law school had taught me one lesson above all others; things will go wrong, and they will probably go wrong often.

            Stress management is just about the only practical lesson taught during the first year of law school.  The law school system is designed to take a group of highly ambitious and successful people from all walks of life accustomed to being on top of the heap and make sure ninety percent of them are not in the fabled top ten percent of their class.  So goes the first practical lesson of law school for most (that is, ninety percent of us; I’m sure those top ten learn it some way or another):  you will make mistakes, despite your best plans and efforts, and those mistakes will cost you something.  That missed issue is the difference between the B+ and the A-.  That one Bluebook rule is the difference between making it on Law Review or not.  Your best effort is not a guarantee at the top of the heap any more.  So what do you do now, with your broken bag straps and your wavering confidence? 

            You learn to manage the stress of your best not always being good enough.

            I walked into this internship with a very different attitude than the one I came to law school with.  As the Lead Attorney managing the program told us at our internship orientation, “You will make mistakes, but you must learn from them.  You grow or you go.”  The idea of accepting that I will make mistakes, of letting go of the idea of perfection, used to scare me more than I care to admit.  Yet, as I discovered throughout the course of this internship, learning to let go of the idea has improved my performance significantly.  At my last job, most attorneys would remember me as an awkward, anxiety-ridden young intern who cowered away from conflicts.  The impression at this internship could not be more different; I was easy-going, relatable, well-liked, and produced a constant stream of work that received glowing praises from my mentor and the judges. 

            I walked into this internship with a wealth of academic knowledge hoping to learn as much as I can about putting that knowledge to work in legal practice.  Below is a guidebook of those practical lessons gleaned throughout the course of this internship.

Practical Lessons

            1.  Keep it Simple, Stupid.

            The acronym is “K.I.S.S.”  Michael Scott, the doofy and blundering boss on the T.V. show The Office, made this acronym one of his rarely correct insights into life and business.  The concept behind it is, of course, simple; strive for the simplest possible way to say something.  Of course!  Why wouldn’t you?  Yet, law students take this lesson for granted; it seems obvious, too obvious, to think about any further than this paragraph.

            The reasoning behind this idea is essential to being an effective advocate, either in person or in writing.  Why?  Why do judges and lawyers savor simplicity in legal argument when they are lucky enough to find it? 

            Think, for a moment, of the worst-written opinion you have ever read.  For me, it was a case out of Contracts, written some time long, long ago, before electricity or paved roads or any appreciation for simplicity.  I raged over the convoluted pages, wondering aloud WHY on Earth would anyone write something so poorly?!?  Why be so wordy, so repetitive?  I stopped and marveled in child-like wonder at a paragraph that was really just a single sentence; a mess of clause after clause, an evil calculus of outdated words at war with one another.  I took a break from figuring out the case and headed to the kitchen for something to drink, pondering why anyone would write opinions like these.  Was it simply to torture future generations of law students, or some spiteful attempt to hold the English language hostage with random Latin phrases for more than a few painful pages?

            The more I pictured the writer and his audience, the more it began to make sense.  This was not a case where some poor court reporter was simply transcribing the judge’s words by hand with some quill and ink; no, this was a real written opinion.  This was some guy in the sixteen hundreds, some real flesh-and-blood guy, sitting in a building without central heating or air conditioning, probably wearing a massive white wig and too many layers of hand-sewn clothing.  This was some guy who had to prove that he was an educated lawyer by making his writing as complicated and hard to figure out as possible.  The writing audience needed to see that he could use Latin; the reader was not running between meetings on a Smartphone.

            DON’T BE THAT WIG-WEARING GUY.  No one is impressed by the writings Mr. Long-Winded, Must-Prove-How-Educated-I-Am.  

            2.  Be a People Person.

            As much as law school emphasizes a skill set that can be honed by late hours spent alone in the library, law school offers no course on another set of skills equally important;  how to interact with people.

            Some attorneys wrote briefs that are not just bad --- they were shockingly bad.  The kind of bad that made me wonder how they ever got through law school, let alone passed the bar, let alone got a job.  How can such bad writers progress this far in the legal profession?

            One particularly bad brief made me see how a bad writer can still be a great advocate.  As much as the defense counsel's brief failed to make any point at all amid the myriad spelling and grammar mistakes, and even with my recommendation to deny his motion, the defense attorney got his motion granted.  He did so by showing up in court armed with good arguments and the litigation skills to present them forcefully to the judge. 

            Through his ability to talk...to people.  And that's not the only example.  Being able t talk to other attorneys, to read into what to say and when, gets you farther in your case.  Everyone has their own biases, their own world opinions; being able to read people and appeal to their nature is an essential skill to advocating.  Those attorneys who could do so, who knew just what the judges needed to hear to make a decision in their favor, who knew just what the District Attorney was after so they could forcefully rebut them, those attorneys won in a court where not many defense lawyers do.

            3.  Writing a Good Brief is Like Playing Piano.

            This semester, I decided to take up playing piano for the first time in my life.  My mentor and I had many conversations in passing about how fun it is to play an instrument; this is how I found out that he is a major Bluegrass fan and a seasoned guitar player.  I had never played an instrument, nor had anyone ever taught me.

            Yet, the experience taught me that something unnervingly complex can be broken down into simple, easily accomplished units.  The most beautiful song is really just one pattern played by the left hand and another by the right; there is order in what looks like a chaos of black and white keys, a pattern which is easy on its own but can create seemingly endless combinations.

            Even the most complex legal issue can be broken down into simple units.  Being able to do this for a reader allows them to see each step in the reasoning, much like it allows a piano player to see each step in a song and play it.  Using sub-headings within an issue helps to make each unit distinct, like a key on a piano.  Each unit has to make sense in that order, much like keys played in the right order.  Bad briefs are like poorly-played melodies; the keys are out of order, or missed altogether; bad briefs are missing logical links in the chain, or the links are out of order and make no sense.

            Above all, brief writing and piano playing both require a good deal of patience and practice.  The more I practiced brief writing, every single day, the more fluid the process became and the better my briefs became.  Taking the kind of methodical, step-by-step approach I took to learning piano helped me write thorough work.  And that thoroughness showed through to the attorneys and judges who read it.

            4.  “Nice” Lawyers Are NOT Pushovers.  But They Aren’t Jerks, Either.

            My horror stories from last summer are the stuff of legal intern legends.  On one particular day in Child Support's court offices, there was only one attorney on staff.  And she detested me for no particular reason.  In fact, she detested everyone.  As soon as anyone was out of earshot, she was immediately ripping them apart with the kind of disdain that Cruella De Ville would envy.  It was a busy day, so she had me take a few parents' cases on by myself.  One parent in particular had a complex case; calculating her child support seemed impossible.  She had multiple state benefits in play, and I honestly had no idea how changing the child support order would affect each of them.  So I decided to ask the Cruella attorney for help; after all, I did not want to give these parents bad advice. 

            Well, Cruella refused to help me whatsoever.  In front of an entire office full of people, she screamed that she had no time to help some clueless law clerk.  I stood there frozen, paralyzed with fear and completely at a loss for what to do.  There was no one to ask, and I could not answer the questions from these parents, who already sat waiting for me in my cubicle.  I turned around without saying a word to Cruella, and went back to my cube with no idea what to do.  I simply told the parents I could not help them with all of their issues and sent them back into the waiting room where they would have to wait the rest of the day for Cruella to get to them. 

            In retrospect, I should have stood my ground with Cruella.  I should have reminded her that her boss told her that she was the supervising attorney that day, and that her boss told every attorney in that office to help the clerks when they needed it.  I should have told her that these parents had already waited half the day.  In short, I should have stood up for myself.  In short, I was so nervous that I was acting like a pushover.

            When I came into this internship, I made a conscious effort to NOT to let anxiety and inexperience get the better of me.  Just because someone is a master doesn't mean they can treat people like their time is worth less.  I would not get strung out to dry again by anyone unhelpful, or let them treat me like I was just another clueless clerk.  At the same time, I was not about to sabotage myself by being overly aggressive; after all, I am only a volunteer and not yet an attorney.  I don't know nearly as much as anyone here.

            I think my air of confidence was apparent to the court.  Instead of disdain, I received respect from the entire staff because I commanded it.  I let go of the nervousness and decided to let the suit fit; I may not have passed the Bar Exam yet, but having the attitude that I am competent and  helpful showed.  Although no one at this office was a Cruella, I spoke up when I thought something was amiss or when I needed help.  I was polite, calm, but effective.  I had struck a balance between the former pushover attitude of inexperience without going to the kind of extremes that a Cruella would.

            5.  “Bad Lawyering” Happens.  A Lot.

            This internship has exposed me to briefs written by attorneys from all kinds of backgrounds.  One habit I developed when looking at a case was to run a search for each attorney through the State Bar's website.  This would tell me if they had any sanctions against them, where they went to law school, how long they have been licensed.  I did this to get a fuller picture of the writer behind the brief, and to help judge the credibility of the brief itself.

            I did this because the truth is that there are plenty of bad lawyers out there, licensed and ready to be negligent or reckless or worse.  Many of the briefs I read through would contain harmless errors, like mis-cited authority or spelling mistakes.  Others would dance the border between harmless mistakes and negligence.  In one case, a defense attorney completely ignored the language in a fax arraignment form that waived a speedy trial before filing a motion for a dismissal for violating speedy trial rights.  Because he failed to read the form before executing the arraignment, he lost what would have otherwise been a valid claim to a dismissal of the charges for his client. 

            The best defense I found to all the bad lawyering going on is a healthy dose of skepticism at the credibility of, well, everything attorneys do.  As a member of the court, I learned to double-check the accuracy of everything attorneys submitted, right down to page citations.  I learned to never take for granted that everyone --- law clerks, experienced attorneys, or even judges --- can be mistaken.

            6.  You Need an Honest Answer:  How are You Feeling Today?

            In a way, we come into law school like children who have been coddled by their parents.  Only here, the parents are really the academic world, coddling us with good grades and teacher praise and merit scholarships.  Law school refuses to caudle; instead, law school is like the parent that teaches to “self-soothe.”  Yes, law school is that parent; the one that leaves the child in the room to cry itself into exhaustion, ignoring its desperate pleas entirely while sipping a glass of Merlot and reading a book.  It leaves us alone when we cry about missed opportunities, grades we think we don't deserve, and the job we should have gotten. 

            Now that the coddling is over, the cold-shouldered lesson law school has to teach us about self-dependence can be appreciated when it comes time to step into the real world.  The wisdom of self-soothing came into play for me at this internship.  I was left alone to sink or swim much of the time, taking responsibility for my own time and my own projects.  One thing law school has taught me well is to self-motivate, to set my own schedule and follow it.  Yet, at the same time, the lack of coddling and all-A's in law school has prepared me for the real legal world in an emotional sense.  I don't expect a parade of praise with every good job I do; I expect the harshness of failure and its consequences, which makes me mindful of preventing as many mistakes as I can and allows me to learn from the ones I do make.

7.  Trust That it Will All Work Out for the Better.

        There will be many opportunities that test your boundaries and limitations.  There will be many times when you question your sanity.  There will be even more times when others question your sanity.  But at the end of the day, you have to be able to look back at your track record for these situations and know, to your very core and center, that it has always ultimately worked out in your favor.  Going through the pain somehow always made both you and your life better.

        The older you get, the more difficult it is to risk trying something new, to risk letting the boundaries and limitations expand.  Never let go of that child-like ability to dive head-first into something that others call "too risky" or "crazy," because their crazy just might be your cup of tea. 

And don't let broken bag straps and lockers get you down when the big picture looks just fine. 

Los Angeles Thai New Year's Festival (Songkran Festival)

Two of our fighters will be competing at this event!  My opponent dropped out last minute otherwise I would be fighting as well.  If you are in Los Angeles, come check it out!

Peg Leg Smith's Legend and the Lost Mines of Jamul

Near the trail head at Peg Leg Mine Road, Mt. McGinty, Jamul, California

The road to the house my parents built winds endlessly into Mexico. It takes you on a journey through the rolling brown California semi-arid desert hills. The narrow drive cuts deep into the hidden underskirts of East County, the local outback region to the polished vacation city of San Diego. "Deep" East County - a hillbilly cousin to the demure debutante towns manufactured during the housing boom of the nineties. The cut-off-shorts wearing relative of the perfectly manicured, pre-fabricated, identical housing plan developments. With each passing mile, the trees become more overgrown; the brush wilder and unrulier; the telephone poles and wires less and less maintained. Horses and emus roam in front yards. Hand-painted, decaying signs instruct visitors that trespassing is "not allowed." The road fades quietly into sleepy Mexico border towns like Tecate, where you pass a lonely Border Patrol stall as the country but not the landscape changes.

A sign along the trail, rusted and blown through with bullet holes.

 

The day I found out I failed my first Bar exam attempt, I drove the long road to the house I grew up in.  

It was a home built literally from scratch by my mother and father.  In the eighties, Jamul was little more than an endless geography of undeveloped highway-side parcels.  Then, rumors of a massive highway connecting Chula Vista to Jamul spurred developers into action.  Hopeful homeowners came in droves to build their dream homes from the raw, untouched land.  It was their miniscule slice of Manifest Destiny - and it attracted those who still wanted a piece of the wild to tame.  Those who heard rumors of untapped wealth and, like prospectors, rushed to the whispers of gold.

My parents took a vacant lot in the middle of nowhere, made a plan, and made something out of nothing.  They manifested a house in the desert.  They didn't have degrees or certificates or titles.  They had ideas and hammers and wood and ambition.  Though none of us own it or have a right to it in any legal sense, that house will always be ours.  It will always be a product of us.  It is unique to us.  It did not come from some housing plan.  It was not pushed out of some mold.  It did not come from a certified architect or engineer or specialist.  It was cast from the mold we made.  It was our dreams turned into solid dimension.

There is a public hiking trail behind the property where I can come and pay the old place a cordial visit whenever I like.  Whenever the call to go home, for sentimentality or solace, beckons me to go to a place where the the mountain top view of the horizon is expansive enough to fit all the thoughts in my head.  

My parents must have hiked the trail with my sister and I a thousand times when I was a kid.  

But that first excursion into the what was then an unknown, overgrown wilderness felt exactly like this:

Soon, nearly every sunny Saturday, my parents guided us through the trail and up the side of the mountain.  We would pack sandwich lunches in the morning, don our best sneakers, and set out for trail like a group of mountaineers.  We grabbed fallen branches as hiking sticks, battling with them like swords until they broke.  We kicked the brittle Yucca trees in half because that Van Damme guy did it in that movie we saw on TNT.

Things along the trail that used to feel foreign grew into characters themselves; unique, inanimate beings with an air of magic in the long outdoor silences.  The lone tree at the top of the trail overlooking the ocean.  The moist silken sand speckled with silver near the dried up creek beds.  The mystery of the rusting, abandoned car half-buried in soil.  The sudden sparkle of quartz underneath the crumbling side of granite on the side of the trail revealed by wild storms.  These became relics of a thousand wonderful family weekends more powerful than photos.  More profound than fancy vacations to faraway places.  Everyone could go skiing in Big Bear or jet to some other country (and they did).  But we had something no one else had.  We had Peg Leg Mine.

And that, of course, is exactly the street name.  Peg. Leg. Mine. Road.

Middle: Peg Leg Smith's Monument in Anza Borrego.  Right/Left: Peg Leg Smith.

The Legend of Peg Leg Smith

That street name deserves a bit of an explanation.  The trail behind our old house leads to a series of abandoned mines.  There are three that I know of; when I was a kid, they were open and you could crawl down into them.  They were littered with old bottles and trash from other hikers.  They became dark after only a few feet; the air inside was stale and old; they could collapse at any minute because they had not been maintained in decades.  They were little more than holes dug into the side of the mountains, half-caved in, and left to nature's whim.  They were good hiding places for things like mountain lions or rattle snakes.

The mines were supposedly opened by Thomas "PegLeg" Smith (1801-1866), a California mountain man who guided early expeditions in the American South West.  He was known as a fur trapper, prospector, gambler, teller of tall tales, heavy drinker, and a horse thief.  What facts are verifiable about Peg Leg are scant and most of his legend is hotly disputed by locals and experts.  What follows here are facts patch-worked together from the rumors and records.

"Peg Leg" Smith was born in Crab Orchard, Kentucky at the turn of the nineteenth century, the same year that John Marshall was appointed Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court.  The same year that third U.S. President Thomas Jefferson was sworn into office and three years before Lewis and Clark embarked on their great expedition.  Peg Leg heard the call to adventure at a young age, running away from home to join a Mississippi flatboat where he would leave with a surly group of men on a trapping expedition.  "Trapping" refers to capturing and killing animals to sell their coats in the early North American fur trade industry, a then-booming trade in which all sorts of miscreants and social misfits could bring home the bacon, literally.  The practice was messy, dirty, and wild.  It was something mountain men did, right up there with brewing moonshine.  Peg Leg made his way through most of what is now Colorado and California by fur-trapping beavers along the rivers and tributaries of the American south west.

As any prudent nineteenth-century fur merchant would, Peg Leg became intimately familiar with various Indian tribes.  He spoke the trade; knew the customs; could barter within the language.  He supposedly took several Indian wives.

Yet, not all of Peg Leg's relations with the Indians were so friendly.  Hence the story of how he became "Peg Leg" in the first place.  He took an arrow to the knee during his travels thanks to an Apache Indian during one of many hostile outbreaks between white settlers and the Apache.  No one wanted to help this mischeivous trapper and his festering wound.  So, about two hundred years before Aron Ralston would amputate his own arm in a hiking accident, a desperate pre-Peg Legged Smith cut off his own infected leg at the knee with a skinning knife.  Much like John Smith, Peg Leg asserts that he was taken in by beautiful Indian women who nursed him back to health, chewing and spitting medicinal berry juice into his leg stump.  When he eventually made his miraculous recovery, he fashioned himself a peg leg out of a tree branch.

Some time around 1836, Peg Leg and his feral troupe got lost in a sandstorm, purportedly while travelling on the Colorado River.  Through the thick clouds of sand, they saw the outline of three mountain buttes.  They climbed to the summit of one to escape the storm.

While sitting at the top of one of the three buttes, Peg Leg picked up an almond-sized black rock.  The entire hillside seemed to be covered in these peculiar black rocks.  Peculiar because some seemed metallic and heavy.  He stashed a few in his pocket, figuring them to be of some value.

When the troupe reached what is now Los Angeles, Peg Leg took his black rocks to experts to see what he could get for them.  As it turned out, the black coating was merely a discoloration known as desert varnish and the rocks were actually gold nuggets.

Herein lies the self-defeating tragedy of Peg Leg Smith.  Upon discovering the true value of his find, he would forever be unable to locate the original three butte mountain where he found them.  He would spend a lifetime telling yarns about his lost black gold.

The story of his black desert gold, however, flourished.  For years afterward, people flocked to the Southern California desert lands to find the lost gold.  Anything that resembled the three-butte mountain was excavated, ravaged for gold or other precious minerals, and eventually abandoned. The hills of Mt. McGinty - the hills upon which my parents decided to build their home - resembled Peg Leg's three-butte mountain and therefore was mined for his black gold.  Miners took a chance on the unknown and dug deep into the mountains, churning out whatever they could find in whatever place seemed like it might be hiding the deceptive black-coated gold nuggets.

The abandoned mines of Jamul are likely not even the location where Peg Leg claimed to see his black gold (in fact, there is a monument to Peg Leg over an hour's drive away in Anza Borrego Springs).  Yet, this place has always been one that attracts dreamers and entrepeuners like my parents - those who, where others see only arid dirt, see where gold might be.  It was the seat of my childhood, and will always sparkle with the possibility of Peg Leg's adventures and gems not yet discovered.  It is a place where all things are possible and one glance from the top of the three buttes reminds me where all of my adventures started, how far I've come since, and how many there are left.

View from the top of the Three Buttes of Mt. McGinty

One of the now-barred caves/mines of Peg Leg Mine Road

Peg Leg Mine Road Trail after being freshly washed out with rain.

The pattern of silt and sand after the rain along the trail.

Inspiring Lawyer Movies: Philadelphia

Imagine if a Yoda-like creature of Lawyerly wisdom lived in each and every law school library.  

"Young Skywalker-Law-Student, write a good outline, you must."

Old, decrepit, and a mystical provider of answers in times of need, Law School Yoda would dwell between the Law Review volumes no one ever reads.  I imagine him sitting in full-lotus position on a stack of dusty Tax Law pages, meditating next to a single candle and a Buddha statue.  The scene would have all the grainy charm of an early-nineties movie, right down to the obvious Animatronic Jim Hensen puppetry of our Law School Yoda.  He would blink awkwardly, mechanically.  When he looks at you from the soft-lit nest of printed pages, cue the theme rising in the background, with all the tinkering audio-baubles of eighties childhood magic.  Think of the scene when Atreyu meets Falcor, or when the Goonies discover the pirate ship.  

"Why, Atreyu, why do seek happiness from grades and jobs from OCI when you know better?"

Disgruntled and frustrated law students would wander the stacks, seeking out wisdom and whimsy in their times of desperation.  Times when coffee isn't enough motivation for that all-nighter.  Times when loan debt, low job prospects, or systemic and fundamental unfairness seem too great to bear.  They would find him in the eerie post-midnight hours of finals, or the wee hours of the morning before graded briefs or appellate arguments.  

I never found a Law Library Yoda.  Instead, I had two things when coffee just wasn't enough to keep going: 1) a fabulous group of friends from my law school year and 2) my favorite lawyer movies.


I love lawyer movies.  Not because they are an accurate reflection of real life, but because they trigger the dreams and ideals of a younger me.  They capture moments and memories of when I saw the potential of what a lawyer could be.  When I had merely a sketch of what good could be done when one dons the lawyerly suit and attaché case.  (Or if you want to get governmental wid' it NA NA NA NA NA NA NA...as Rip Torn put it to Will Smith in Men in Black, "the last suit you'll ever wear.")


There are plenty of real-life examples of inspiring lawyering; warm-blooded, defined, precedent-setting individuals and cases that continually inspire and motivate.  All are surely examples that the hypothetical Law School Yoda would point to with his wrinkly green finger.

Brown v Board (school desegregation) is a bread-and-butter example of lawyers being change-makers.

But some days, give me fiction.  Give me some un-reality for a few hours.  And since I'm taking time away from studying, make it good.  

MUST-WATCH LAWYER MOVIES: PHILADELPHIA

(1993, TriStar Pictures, directed by Jonathon Demme.)

Tom Hanks.  Denzel Washington.  The AIDS controversy.  Need I say more?  Probably not, but I will.  This 1993 courtroom drama casts Tom Hanks as Andrew Beckett, the central character in the recreation of a real-life pioneering AIDS discrimination case from 1987.  Beckett, a gay attorney working for a big Philadelphia law firm, gets maliciously fired after a senior partner notices a sore on his face.  The sore, of course, is heavily associated as symptomatic of the deadly and then-mysterious AIDS virus.  A brief for Beckett's case goes missing just before a statute of limitations deadline but miraculously found - just in time to save the firm's case but to still frame Beckett for incompetence.

In 1987, people knew next to nothing about AIDS, how it was contracted, how it spread, or how to deal with people diagnosed with the incurable disease.  AIDS was a death sentence.  A threat not yet contained or understood.  Because the virus is transmitted through blood or other bodily fluids, it spread like wildfire among drug users and one isolated sexual community in particular: gay white males.  In a few short years, people came to primarily associate AIDS with intravenous drug users and the white male homosexual community.  1987 was wrapped up in the myth of AIDS as the "gay white man's disease." 

The film carefully and agonizingly showcases the powerful stigma evoked by this myth through its unrelenting attention to the most simplistic details of Beckett's experience.  This begins with Beckett struggling to find an attorney willing to even take on an AIDS patient as a client. Enter Denzel Washington's character Joe Miller, once-opposing counsel of Beckett who hung his own shingle to chase ambulances.  Miller meets with Beckett in his office and is - at first - cordial and relaxed in his approach to a potential client.  When Beckett reveals his diagnosis, everything changes.  

Miller glances nervously at everything Beckett touches.  He shuts down and is suddenly reluctant to talk in depth about Beckett's potential case.  After Beckett leaves, he literally runs to his secretary and demands an appointment with his doctor to clarify how AIDS spreads.  Miller, for all intents and purposes, freaks out.

Months later, the turning point between Beckett and Miller happens in a local law library.  A white man walks by with a look of utmost disdain at the idea of a black man (Miller) being in a law library.  Miller glares back defiantly.  Moments later, Miller notices Beckett researching at a common table.  A  librarian comes to Beckett and loudly announces, "WHY YES, there IS a section on HIV-related discrimination!!"  Everyone in earshot looks at Beckett in horror.  This, ahem, librarian (I can't think of something kind to call this...argh...librarian...so we'll call him just that)

then asks Beckett if he would "be more comfortable in a private study room."  Beckett says no.  Librarian stands there.  And...stands there.  He asks Beckett again: "sir, are you SURE you wouldn't be more comfortable in a private study room?"  Then, one of my all-time favorite Tom Hanks moments.  Beckett looks this librarian straight in the face and asks, "No...would YOU be more comfortable?"  After witnessing this exchange arranged parallel to Miller's own passing moment of discrimination, Miller comes over to Beckett's table and begins discussing the substance of his case.  Miller and Beckett become attorney-client.  Miller and Beckett go to trial.  Miller and Beckett make history.

One of my favorite moments in this movie, aside from the heart-rending opera scene, is when a dying Beckett explains to the jury why he loves the law in front of the big firm honchos who stole his career and impugned his reputation:

Suddenly, after my short jaunt into fiction-lawyer-world, I remember how many good reasons there are to be a lawyer.  How the possibilities of what you can do with your license are only as limited as your own mind.  How you can define "lawyer" any way you please, with your actions and capacity for doing right.  

I remember that coffee is enough.  I turn back to the books and cover letters and resumes and welcome the coming hours.  There it is!  That resolve to keep pushing into the wee hours.   

Pumpkin Pie Protein Shake

A daily post-workout treat packed with protein and calcium.  Get a protein 'stache this holiday season instead of love handles.  Enjoy!

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup ice
• 1 container Trader Joe's Pumpkin Non-Fat Greek Yogurt
• 1 PURE PROTEIN Shake, Vanilla Creme flavor
• 1/2 banana
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• Splenda or Stevia sweetener, to taste (optional)
• Pumpkin Pie Spice, to taste (optional)

Solitude and Independence: Same Same, But Different

A Louis CK video went viral a few weeks back, striking cords with many.

I remember a time as an adolescent when I began to think that books and art and research and writing were somehow more fulfilling than interacting with actual people.  What the Hell is wrong with me?  Am I (GASP!) antisocial because I would rather read this book than go to this party?!?

I decided early on that I would officially stop caring what it made me.  As I grew up, I became more of an extrovert.  However, the quiet, reserved thinker still tends to show more often than not.  Watching this video reminded me of a fact that my journey to Thailand has made me profoundly remember: THANK GOD I was one of those weird kids who loved my alone time.  How else would I remember that in a Smartphone world with constant possibility for interaction?

During the past three years, stress and grief would often make me forget that fact.  I would wonder where my love of solidarity went; I would long for it, I would seek it out.  I would get frustrated when I couldn't find it in the same places I used to.  I would distract myself endlessly between work and school and everything else, hoping to again find it someday.

When I supplanted myself from all things familiar - when the internet would go out for days on end and monsoons flooded the streets and all I had was a room with a bed and a Bruce Lee book and pen and paper - I was forced to finally face solidarity.  There it was, staring me in the face for hours on end.  Just me and my brain.  No distractions.  White walls.  A bed.  A toilet.  A fridge with water bottles and electrolyte packets, Baht coins in a cup on top of it, a room key next to a pack of gum that melted in the heat.

At first, the isolation was jarring.  Terrifying, even.  But now...

Now, I remember.

A room alone is far from empty; the mind alone is never a prison because it cannot be confined.  A mind left alone is limitless.

Vladimir Nabokov, the author of the infamous Lolita, explicated the idea in twelve sophistically sanguine lines of Pale Fire's introductory poem:

I was the shadow of the waxwing slain
By the false azure in the windowpane
I was the smudge of ashen fluff--and I
Lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky,
And from the inside, too, I'd duplicate
Myself, my lamp, an apple on a plate:
Uncurtaining the night, I'd let dark glass
Hang all the furniture above the grass,
And how delightful when a fall of snow
10 Covered my glimpse of lawn and reached up so
As to make chair and bed exactly stand
Upon that snow, out in that crystal land!

-Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire, First Canto

In this canto, the protagonist describes how images reflect in a window by assuming the identity of whatever is reflected in the window's glass pane.  It is a protagonist lost in the ecstasy of imagination, imagining consciousness from every minute and grandiose detail of life - observing closely enough to feel himself float like an ashen fluff caught in an updraft, or the dead bird (waxwing) that smashed head-first into the glass, tricked "by the false azure in the windowpane."   Lost in the illusion of how the reflection of furniture on the inside pane meets the horizon line visible outside and makes the bed "exactly stand...Upon that snow, out in that crystal land!"

But the point of it is this: the mind turns something as simple as a window reflection into pure magic.  It passes the most mundane of details through the imagination and churns out poetry.  Find a lonely window in an empty room, and marvel at what you might find if you shut off the idea that alone = bad.  What wonder lies in ideas when we stop long enough to form good ones!

But for every possibility of turning trivial detail into tremendous beauty, the mind is capable of equally tremendous darkness.

Therein lies the fear.

Therein lies the reason why checking your phone is so much easier than letting the mind wander.

Still - Smartphones and all - the world is still not yet enough to fill the solidarity of the mind.  The physical world, even if broken into each infinitesimal part, strung out atom for atom, cannot annihilate the basic truth of existing as a singular individual.  It cannot fill the self.  Put more simply - at the end of the day, you're always alone.  Whether you're in an empty studio in Bangkok or wrapped up in the arms of a husband or a wife.  For all your contacts and connections and loved ones.  No matter how tightly you cling to everything else, you exist as something independent of all other things.  No one will ever see the movie that rolls on through your head, no matter how many words you write.  People fade out.  They die, they move, and nothing ever stays the same.

People will read that paragraph a number of ways.  For many, it will be too harsh to think about; something to be feared and forgotten as quickly as possible.  The whole idea of Alone summons demons from the darkest cataclysms of the mind, slithering up from the subconscious like the shadows of the monster hiding just out of sight.  It is the adult Boogeyman; it lives under your bed, and you never know when you might feel it there.  You can't see it, but you can feel it lying underneath you, waiting to wrap you in the cold embrace of its truth: no one else is really there.  Even when you're lying next to someone.  It's no guarantee they'll stick around, or that they mean what they say.  Never will you find immunity from death and loss and the destruction of whatever you're holding onto to delude yourself otherwise.

It's no wonder people cling.  It's natural - paleolithic humans who traveled in groups lived longer, healthier lives because of the simple calculus of strength in numbers.  Those who had the strongest urge to be part of the group survived, passing their genes encoded with innate desire to belong onto the next generation, then the next.  This instinct was borne of an era where belonging meant shelter, food, sex, warmth; solitude meant cold, starvation, hardship.  The world was wild, and we were, too.

How wild it is, then, to return to that state - to be alone.

To stray from the safety of the pack.

Henry David Thoreau was one who strayed.  He left his father's pencil factory to live alone in the woods and write poetry.  What a hippie, the world said.  What a hippie, the world still says.  Thoreau summed up his decision for wildness this way:

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.” 

But Thoreau was never writing about solitude in the evolutionary sense.  Thoreau is not talking about deprivation, starvation, cold, and everything the Ape Brain associates with being away from the group.  What Thoreau wrote struck at the core of a transcendental idea, one which prevails over the Ape Brain in one simple way.

But, in that way, solitude is intensely illusory.  The acute sensation of being alone - of starving shelterless in the cold - no longer applies.  We live in a world with six billion people.  With smartphones.  With Facebook.  With six billion other people with the same alone-hating DNA.

So why the Hell do so many people disparage and still fear being alone???  Why do we all relate to this video so much?

Perhaps we aren't forced to face it often enough to remember how small and weak a beast solitude actually is.  Perhaps all of our distractions have taken us out of practice.  Without that metaphorical check under the bed before we go to sleep, the monster under the bed grows more and more vicious in our minds each day.

Maybe the answer is simple, like so many answers are: face your fear.  Pull the car over and sob like Louie did and wait for happiness to come back to you.  Learn that lesson.

Then, entertain the idea that you can ditch your proverbial pencil factory and wander into the woods like Thoreau.  It won't really be terrifying like you imagine.  In fact, you'll amaze yourself with the wonders you find there.  Maybe then the fear will fade, and one day you will notice how much stronger you are for facing it without your Smartphone.  Only then will being alone feel like independence instead of solitude.

Staying Power

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?

-Langston Hughes

The face of defeat is not an easy one to look directly at too closely.  When one observes the exact contours of a dream defunct - the jagged, unnatural angles of its broken pieces sticking out through someone's eyes - people look away, uncomfortable.  Uncomfortable with the reality of philosophical gravity - the always-present possibility of failure.

A Kaewsamrit fighter after losing a title bout

There's something unsettling about the way American culture views losses.  I always feel like people aren't understanding a basic calculus going on here.  It goes something like this:

RULE ONE.  You're not supposed to lose, American culture teaches you.  Losing is for...well, losers.  You don't want to be a loser, right?  Don't ever fail.  Win - don't lose.

RULE TWO.  GO FOR IT.  YOLO.  Jump on in there and take a risk.  Make something of yourself.  Only doers go and get things done, so go do.  Don't be afraid and don't look back, just do it.

We are raised by our teachers and parents to believe all of these things.  But few will bother to tell you how much these two basic ideas actually conflict with each other.

Doesn't jumping in there and taking a risk necessarily involve some inevitable failures?  And if so, isn't it true that the more risks we take the more failures we guarantee ourselves?  So the more we follow Rule 2 the more we will ultimately violate Rule 1.  And if losing makes us losers, and if we aren't supposed to ever be losers, then isn't the inevitable conclusion that we shouldn't ever take a risk?  But then, aren't we violating Rule 2 in order to follow Rule 1??  How on Earth do you follow both??  How do you "go for it" without losing?

The answer is simple; the rules are flawed.  The conclusion is sound but the premises are BS.  You can't follow both.  It's the biggest steaming pile that anyone has ever sold you.  It's not probable.  It's not possible.  Forget it.  The sooner you do, the better.

If we know all of these things, why do we still shame people for losing when they gave everything they had?  Why do we judge them for it?  Why can't we see that both the man who has an impressive stack of losses - in addition to the rare undefeated champions- has lived far more than the man with none?

The first time I saw one of the fighters from my camp lose, I expected the coaches to be angry or upset or disappointed.  But the coaches were none of those things.  The team was none of those things.  Instead, the focus was on what could be learned.  How to improve.  What to do differently to avoid making the same mistake.

Why doesn't the rest of the world work like this?  I thought of how different my Western education was growing up.  Mistakes in academia were always deemed unacceptable.  Coming in second instead of first was a thing to be mourned, ashamed of, and angry about.  God help you if you submit a memo to a judge that has a grammatical error in it.  Misread part of a question on a law school final?  You're sunk.  You're done.  Never speak of it to anyone.

In the fight world, each and every mistake gets broadcast for the audience to see.  There is no hiding behind anonymity.  Academia had taught me that this would probably invite nothing but chastising and mockery.  But you know what?  For all the punches I've not thrown right - for any losses - for any mistake - I've never known a teammate or coach to provide anything other than constructive criticism.  I've been lucky to be around great people.  But, more than that, losses are viewed differently in the fight world.  The people who let their dreams die with a single loss don't survive long enough to come back and do any of the chastising or shaming - those get filtered out right away.  The ones who stick around don't see losses as a destruction of their dream to fight or as a fracture to their identity as a fighter.  Instead, a loss is a misstep to be learned from to become a better fighter.  It makes for a sweeter comeback.  It fuels more fire.  The mourning of a loss is always bittersweet because of the knowledge that the current sting makes the future savoring of a win all the more powerful.

The morning before I left Bangkok to head back home, I sat at a cafe down the street, contemplating and digesting the details of the journey thus far.  I was more physically drained and yet spiritually full than I had ever known.

Water danced in the sparkling sun from a fountain just outside the cafe.  It shot straight up, working endlessly against gravity.  Each drop would rise to the apex of the arc only to fall to the bottom yet again; the pumps and machines would work in perpetuity to keep this silly maneuver going.  They would suck power from the wall, power someone somewhere had to buy from someone who had to convert it to electricity from oil deep in the Earth.  All this work so that water would never stay where it's going.  All this work for what?  For nothing?

All-this-work-for-what was, of course, the wrong question.  The beauty was not in the completion of a loop or the specific getting of somewhere; it was not in the win, or the destination, or the ending.  Life everywhere was exactly as this water; what defined this water, and everything living, was the fight.  Pushing back.  Pushing up, over and over again.  Pushing out and against opposing forces was as basic as a seed breaking through the soil and reaching a new leaf into the sun.  Pushing out and against opposing forces is life-force in its most elemental of forms.  It is the difference between living and dead.  Perhaps this is why fighters so often describe a fight as when they feel most alive.

We fear looking into the eyes of the defeated man because we see a parable of death; we see the moment when pushing out and against opposing forces might actually cease.  Maybe today is the day that mystical energy that fuels us runs out.  From what unnamed, blackened well in the human soul will I dig out the courage and will to keep pushing back?

So what, then, gives fighters staying power?  What keeps them coming back?  Perhaps what fighters know is that failure does not break a dream.  Perhaps fighters just never stop dreaming.

The dream deferred for a fighter does indeed explode; it fires off in a million ecstatic directions, boundless in its measure of ferocity, stretching out past the rational calm self and its facade of reason - funneled into a punch or a kick or a submission, into the moment when nothing else matters but the resounding "no" to the universe's idea that "you can't."

Whatever the reason or the explanation, we continue to watch them and wait, waiting for them to peel up off the canvas and inspire us to get back up again and again and again for all the times we inevitably have yet to fall.