The profession I chose has naturally led me to interact with lawyers while also some colleagues left newspapering and matriculated law school. And meaningful people close to me have chimed in with advice and encouragement to pursue this path — but for naught.
At times my consideration of this pursuit was more serious, though I never did pull the trigger and advance that idea. That’s similar to another professional opportunity that came knocking. As a newspaper reporter posted to the crime and cops beat, a handful of the dozens of police agencies I covered recruited me to help fight crime. One overture went so far as to my opening a conversation with the sheriff and my holding an application in hand.
However, amid more profound consideration, I later told the sheriff I was backing out for three main reasons: many boys grow up wanting to be a cop and those who stick to it often fulfill lifelong dreams, but I remember when my interest faded; an untreated bum ankle at the time saddled my actual ability to realistically fulfill the important job’s physical demands; and I was too serious about chasing news stories as a reporter.
One spring day as an undergraduate Near-Eastern studies history class was minutes from beginning, I struck up a conversation with a classmate whom I knew was on his way to law school once he graduated within weeks. I told him he’s not the first history major to tell me same so we embarked on a conversation as to why history students like law — and we very quickly agreed on a common answer. Much of law is founded on past precedent, which is a study of history. A college girlfriend whose major was psychology also was gung-ho about going to law school, in part because her father was a lawyer. Within a year after graduation, she told me she backed off that aspiration.
As a reporter, I had the delight and pleasure of covering busy courthouses, a responsibility that required my paying rapt attention to courtroom proceedings, making sense of them and presenting this for the readership’s understanding. The courthouse grind was dramatic and exciting like assessing the quality of legal representation for both the government and defense, learning how investigators begin and conduct probes, pondering the credibility of the accused and witnesses, listening to victim impact statements and making sense of judges’ roles and orders.
I once saw a younger sister of a murder victim lunge for the convicted killer as a sheriff’s deputy called into his radio: ‘give me everyone you got’. Once order was restored, the judge remanded her to lockup and I returned the next day to view her apologize to the judge who told her he understood her anger, offered some life advice and informed her he sentenced the convict to life incarceration. During initial hearings, a cuffed and shackled man was trudging toward his turn at the defense table when suddenly he fell forward and cracked the bridge of his nose on a bench’s solid, horizontal wooden seat, prompting facetious smiles and laughter from some accused bank robbers. In what’s among the most memorable quotes from this responsibility, the mother of a murder victim once told the convicted killer during a victim impact statement just before the judge imposed the sentence: ‘I pray every day you die a violent death. That’s how much hate I have for you.’
When a newspaper employing me as its courthouse reporter laid off large numbers of editorial staffers including myself, I considered exploring law school as a next step. That probably was the time to go to law school. Two memorable conversations remain: a judge told me of the fierce pride he enjoyed when filing a meaningful case; and a close family member told me my ‘ducks were in a row’ to further the interest in law. Within months, I ended up landing at another newspaper.
One journalist with a competing publication whose beat was the same as mine stuck it out for a few years before he went on to law school. The website profile of an attorney to whom I was recently referred cites profound years as a newspaper reporter influencing him to explore law school. And shortly after the assault on the US Capitol, I learned of the journalistic past of another lawyer who apparently was a congressional reporter posted to the Capitol. That had me wondering what would have happened had she and my paths crossed on the job at an event involving people like Sen. Barbara Mikulski or US Rep. Steny Hoyer, both of Maryland, as I believe I may have been influenced to more seriously weigh the law school notion.