You’ve got to love a profession where the State board that handles the licensing has its own dedicated department to handle chemical dependency. I know I’m not the only one that noticed this. Things were different when I got my engineering license. Besides the requisite degree, mandatory pocket protector, and defunct social life, all you needed was a crush on any character in Star Trek and lo and behold you got your license. Contrast that with the forms your past employers get from the State Bar. Questions like: do you think he/she may be under the influence of drugs? Could the applicant be declared mentally insane? Both questions to which I’m sure my past employers have had to give a good solid think-through. Seriously, who answers in the affirmative to these things? It reminds me of those stupid questions that the FAA used to ask people when they were checking-in at airports: “So Mr. Terry O’Rist, when you were in
Kandahar, did you pack your bags yourself? And you said that ticking clock tied to those red stick things are just gifts for your nephew Osama?…Have a great flight!”
Is it me or is it every time there is a panel of high-brow lawyers that come to speak at the law center, you go away with the feeling that they are the impaled heads propped up on poles as warning signs to stay away from the path that leads to the evil castle of “Big Law.” Kind of like Santeria meets Sangria. There are people on chemo that are happier than this bunch and who have better hair. I attended a panel event a couple of weeks ago and there were at least four sets of hair plugs, two double-bypasses, one hernia, five wives, two girlfriends and four Porsche Carreras between the three of them. To think those were just the bunch talking health law. I had more red flags pop in my head at that moment than being waved at the ‘66 Russian Communist Party Christmas Mixer.
Should I be afraid? Should we all? When I got into law school I told myself that if the personal injury lawyers that advertised on late night TV saying, “ If you were hurt or killed in a car wreck then call …” could make it through school and pass the bar I could certainly do it. But will there be anything left of me when I’m done? Am I going to be one of those assistant-junior-associate-trainee-attorneys at Dewey, Cheatam & Howe who has a desk-lamp tan and thinks that a good night on the town is pizza delivered to the office on a Saturday night on the firm’s dime, tip included? Not this boy. Well, not yet, anyway.
Probably the biggest reason most people take those high-dollar jobs is that they have more loans than
Latin America in the 1980’s. Shopping around for money to pay for law school is harder than many of you think. As a part-time student things get even more arduous. Most places won’t give you any money if you’re a part-time student but the only reason many of us are part-time students is because there is no way we could afford to go to school full-time. So the only way we can get any money is if we do not make any money but then we will need even more money because we do not have any! A lot like the whole lending business where banks will lend you the money when you’ve got tons of it but the day you are running low on change, those credit offers disappear like the ‘welcome’ cookies at a Jenny Craig convention. It’s no wonder that so many of us turn to the sweet surrender that is Miller-Lite and, in my case, my dear friends, Bacardi & Cola.
What, me have a chemical dependency?
