Why I became a lawyer

Every once and a while someone will ask "hey Cigar whyd you become a lawyer, your some damn good looking and studly you should be in hollywierd making some of them there porn movies" Ok, maybe not the last part.

As you may or may not know I was a paramedic first in life. I had always wanted to be a paramedic ever since I saw DeSoto and Gage of the LA County Fire Department in the mid 70's tv show "Emergency". I was in fact the youngest paramedic in SC history at the time. I am sure by now someone younger has been trained. The county I worked for had to pass a new regulation to hire me. I was 18 and you had to be 21 to work for them. After a while I was burned out and very very arrogant (yes even more so than i am now) and only 21-22. I worked several different jobs until I decided to go back to college.

Somewhere along the way I heard of the Innocence Project and Barry Sheck and Peter Nuefeld. I admired the work they were doing. Here were two guys working thier asses off to free people who were wrongly convicted. Is there a better callig? And throw in Atticus Finch as a role model to aspire to. Hey who wouldnt want to do this. And based on TV I thought being a lawyer would be fun, interesting, well paying and I could make a difference. I was right about 2 of the 4. It is fun and interesting. Some months based on the hours worked verses money collected I make less than $10 and hour and tghings never change. That is the part TV always leave out - the money side. You have to collect money from your clients. think about it. When was the last time you say a TV lawyer charge a client or call asking where is the payment for fees?

So I workd my ass of to get my degree. I was the oldest person in the dorms - 24-28. It made me very popular - I could buy booze. Anyway I got my undergrad degree and then I had to look around for a law school. I was accpeted to several and decided to go to ole miss becuase even out of state tuition was cheaper than in state at South Carolina. Ole Miss was also a regional known school and to be honest to some degree John Grishams books might have played into it. Who knows.

I ended up here and got the law degree. I decided I actually like the place. In law school i got involved in immigration law mainly due to my then wife being an immigrant and a professor getting me an internship with the immigration court. That was where I found my calling - helping immigrants come to the US and helping asylum seekers get refuge. I did that for a while with a corporate firm that was more interested in immigration business law, but that is also how I ended up in LA and made my porn industry contacts. I left and started over as a family law attorney for legal aid.

And now I am a family law attorney who handles asylum law and some basic crimnal law. I gave up on the idea of the noble cause, but still work to do right by my clients - innocent or not, deserving or not.

In a way I have come full circle - my first job out of high school was helping people and here I am still trying to help people, just in a different way.

I guess I didn't really answer the question "why did I become a lawyer" but then again I don't know that I have an answer. I just did and i enjoy it. I live for the court room.