Grand Opening (Free hot dogs and soda! There will be a clown, also.)

I can say with both pride and some disappointment that I did break in 1L “Client Counseling”. They’ve narrowed it down from 80 teams to our little elated bunch of 24. What fun. And I thought I would spend the evening repairing the washing machine and trying to figure out why it’s leaking all over the place. I guess the wife and I will just have to keep wading in to do our laundry for a couple more days. The only thing is that I’m just not sure where the water is coming from. It is like having our own natural spring behind the walls. Perhaps, if that is the case, I will bottle it and sell it. I hear that is where the money is these days. Not the law.

Of course I am only joking. Prof. CivPro mentioned on the first day of class (which seems to have been years ago) that the legal profession is the only known exception to the law of supply and demand. We work the opposite way. The more lawyers there are, the more you need them. The more you need them, the more they charge. What a wonderful, wonderful equation. I think I’m going to start recruiting.

Of course, I tend to believe that if you’ve gone to law school with nothing on your mind but a 6-figure salary then you are in the wrong place. If that is all you are looking for, I can think of several easier ways to make your money. For instance: stay up late tonight and order the Carlton Sheets real estate program. You are guaranteed to make your first 100k in like 6 months or something. Try it and tell me how it works. As for me, I still have a car that uses power steering fluid like its going out of style and a big night for the wife and I is a drive-in movie. (2 movies, 5 bucks. Need I say more?) In any case, if buying real estate with no money down works out, send me something. A consultant fee, maybe?

As for me, I was 13 when I’d decided I would become a lawyer. It was the movie Mobsters that helped me make this informed decision. Up until this time I’d been working under the assumption (having been heavily influenced by Joe Pesci’s performance in Goodfellas) that I wanted to join the mob. Unfortunately, though, I didn’t grow up on the hard streets of New York. I grew up in Oklahoma. And it was Lawton, Oklahoma, at that.

Patrick Dempsey: He played Meyer Lansky, the lawyer to just about the biggest mob boss ever—“Lucky” Luciano. Luciano was played by Christian Slater. So I figured I couldn’t be a Christian Slater. (Not a big disappointment, though. Have you ever seen Kuffs?) But anyone can be a Patrick Dempsey.

Of course there were a few other phases in between here and there. After reading Kerouac’s On the Road I did think I was Abbie Hoffman for awhile, though I never tried to levitate the Pentagon. And there were times when I was having so much fun doing nothing that I had no goals at all. Those occasions were usually either spent in drunken stupors or “love” induced, free-spending, easy-living chaos. The only interruptions would have been the occasional “pregnancy scare” (at which point a guy starts to wonder how the hell he’s going to support a family) or the more rare moments of illumination when I’d wake up and say, “Today I think I’ll actually fulfill my potential.” That usually didn’t last.

Then came my “religious awakening”… And I became a preacher. Who better to speak of sin than a sinner himself, eh?

Well, I can’t put off my Contracts work anymore so I’ll have to end with that. Contracts can be quite tedious. And, unfortunately, I think the only casualty of the “Battle of the Forms” today will be me.