--> divine angst: Barman

Wednesday, October 20, 2004

Barman

Today I went and heard the author of Barman, Alex Wellen, talk.

And he said one thing that I thought was very interesting and encouraging. He said (and though this will be quoted, it's really a paraphrase), "At heart, most lawyers are really writers."

Yes, yes, yes! I mean, that statement sort of holds my entire reason for going to law school. Of course, I obviously have an interest in the discipline, but if I didn't feel that a career in law would afford me opportunities to write and publish, I probably wouldn't pursue it. Because there are lots of disciplines I find interesting but don't want to study in graduate school because I'm pretty sure that that, once I had the degree, I wouldn't write about the discipline I found so interesting any more. I'd be busy doing other things. But lawyers—well, they may do other things, but mostly they write. Write and write and write.

So, yay for Alex Wellen. (Who has a blog, though he updates infrequently because he is on the junket.) Yay for someone saying out loud that lawyers are writers.

One more thing: a statistic he offered up—there are 1,000,000 lawyers in this country and 400,000 of them are not practicing lawyers.