Rick Lax has published Lawyer Boy, a memoir of his years at DePaul University College of Law, in which he explains his journey from aspiring magician to committed attorney. He comes from a family of lawyers, as he details in an amusing genealogy (page 1), suggesting that sticking to conjuring rather than following the family career would have been a real magic act.
Among the things Lawyer Boy does well is explain how law schools take those with an interest in law and turn them into attorneys--that is, people who think like lawyers. Mr. Lax is generous with personal stories, even when they don't flatter him, and such stories illuminate the difficult road that many law students take toward becoming not just members of the legal profession, but responsible adults. It's a long process for the students, and for the instructors, although it undoubtedly seems longer for the people who go through it than for those who teach them.
Mr. Lax's main concern is primarily with the process of becoming an adult, which legal education does rather insist upon. The subtitle of his book is "A Case Study On Growing Up" after all. Growing up is not a magical process. It takes work and practice, just like learning a magic trick, and one does have to do it both in public and in private. The payoff comes when he realizes not just that he can think like a lawyer, but what that means--that one doesn't always have to do so, that one can integrate the law into one's life (pp. 260-265). But I appreciate the comparisons with the practice of magic, which he is in a select position to provide (see pages after 265 for the lagniappe--the magic tricks).
I'm not certain I agree completely with some of Mr. Lax's statements about how to interact with law faculty. On page 101, for example, he says,
First Year Tip: When you're unprepared for class, the absolute worst thing you can say when called upon is, "I'm unprepared." If you think law professors appreciate that kind of forthrightness, you're wrong. When they call on you, they want to see you perform; they're trying to prepare you for the courtroom environment, where you'll be expected to perform for a judge. Acting as if you've done your reading when you haven't may be unethical--outright lying about it surely is--but professors will often forgive misstatements you make in class as long as you make them with gusto.
While he may be correct about the first year (and honestly, I don't remember that being true about my own first year of law school), I'd suggest that "it depends." It depends on the environment at one's law school and the attitude of a particular prof. I'd rather hear from my students they're unprepared for class rather than hear them fumble through a case and waste everybody's time. Of course, I don't want to hear that they're unprepared every day, and I'd like to hear a good reason for their lack of preparation. Granted, I don't teach first year courses. And Mr. Lax is correct when he says that law faculty are trying to prepare students for the "real world" and that judges don't want lawyers to be unprepared, either. That's just the point. This is law school. Not quite the "real world," at least not just yet. Don't be unprepared out there. So don't habitually show up for class unprepared in here. But know that if you are, you can own up to it once or twice, and your prof (at least this prof) will let it go, because this prof has been there. Once or twice. Law profs, like audiences at magic shows, do understand mistakes. We do forgive. We want law students to understand that lesson, because we want law students to grow into lawyers who understand those of their clients, who have made a mess of things, are consequently in need of understanding and assistance.
In any case, Lawyer Boy is an entertaining look at one young man's entry into the somewhat arcane world of the law. Did Mr. Lax really need to leave the world of magic behind completely? No, and he hasn't, and that's a Good Thing, as Martha Stewart would say. Like so many of us who cannot make a living at what we would secretly love to do, what he did need to do was to find to find a place for magic in his life as an avocation. It automatically makes him that object of interest, the hyphenated attorney: Rick Lax, Lawyer-Magician.
