Personal Statement L. Jones if You Laid

Personal Statement

L. Jones

If you laid all of the lawyers in the world, end to end, on the equator - It would be a good idea to just leave them there. -Unknown

Ah yes, the lawyer -- the bane of civilized society as we know it -- the definition of self serving duplicity, concerned with the almighty dollar far more than facilitating the wheels of justice in their ever-toiling task. Indeed, the lawyer has come to represent all that is wrong in American society, from dishonesty to abject greed.

Even for my mother, kind hearted and trusting as she is, a visit to an attorney, or worse, a visit from an attorney, was cause for significant distress, distrust, and outright fear -- after all, she hardly had good experiences with the her attorney.

Again and again, as parents will often do, my mother would tell my sister and I the story how her lawyer had "taken her money" without helping her -- how he had not prepared for the case in which she requested more child support from my well-to-do father. She would also tell me how he had instructed her to "look professional" for the judge, so that she might give "a good impression."

My father, on the other hand, perhaps due to his greater financial resources, seemed to have a different kind of attorney, the kind who actually prepared for court, as well as seemed to have some grasp of what he was doing. You see, according to my mother, while she made her best showing in professional attire (no matter that she worked the night shift in a grocery store and purchased her getup at Goodwill), my father, who was at the time living in style with his new mistress, showed up in a faded work shirt and threadbare blue jeans. As my mother tells it, she went home without the child support increase she so desperately needed, burned the unused documents, notes, and receipts she had so carefully prepared for her "useless" attorney, and cried herself to sleep in her secondhand suit.

I remember how angry her story made me...I recall how, to my childish sensibilities, it all seemed so unfair. First, that her attorney had given her obviously horrible advice, second, that money did seem to buy better legal outcomes, and finally, that a judge could be so blind as to accept appearances over substance. I wondered how anyone could fail to see how desperately my mother need the money to take care of us, and how my father, living in relative luxury, had the means to spare.

A also remember later, after we had grown, how my sister, in the tie-dye and Birkenstock phase of her life, saw her shall we say, farming, activities abruptly halted by the very busy Canadian drug enforcement authorities. This time, my mother would be prepared.

At first represented by a public defender, my sister found herself flown in shackles aboard a float plane over the beautiful British Colombia landscape, uncharacteristically denied bail (highly unusual for her offence and the area), and left to await her court appearance in the local provincial women's penitentiary.

In response, my mother, galvanized by her previous experience with the law, and acutely aware of the failings of "low budget" attorneys, borrowed a huge amount of money and retained the "best" drug defense attorney in Vancouver. As a result, my sister was safely snoring in my home back in the states (on bail) two days later. Further, under the strength of arguments from "Mr. Vancouver," all charges were dropped on constitutional grounds.

Now, don't get me wrong. I don't wish to tout the merit of my sister's penchant for the horticultural sciences. Further, let it stand on the record that I do not share her green thumb. What I do share is my mother's sense of injustice that one must either be independently wealthy, or be willing (or able) to go deeply in debt in order to obtain, not only capable, but highly capable and driven legal representation.

You see, I have experienced how the law can be practiced by skilled and energetic lawyers to serve the important needs of their clients, whether in civil, or criminal court. Further, I have also seen the opposite. The fact that the individual citizen's access to excellent legal representation all to often depends on "the bottom line," pushed me toward the career path that will harness my passion.

Although it is true that I have long admired the complex verbal, conceptual, and logical reasoning of the law, it is its capacity to implement true justice in a variety of situations that stirs my soul. However, I have also realized, through my mother's experience with the law, that it is often largely up to the skills of the attorney to maximize the chances that the law will be applied to the maximum benefit of the individual client, and, although on some level it is not surprising that greater financial resources retain greater legal representation, that fact nonetheless flies in the face of justice.

Because of the experiences in my life, it is my dream to acquire the highest skills possible in the study of law -- yet, it is not my dream to become one of the many, highly skilled, and sought after attorneys that garner astronomical fees from their clients. Instead, it is my hope to help the law benefit "the people," as it should -- to help the hard working mother or father deprived of sufficient child support, to defend the old woman bilked out of her life's savings, or to assist a parent in obtaining the education they are entitled to for their disabled child. In short, it is my dream to learn how to use the law much like the high-powered attorney my mother mortgaged her house to hire, yet on a level that is not financially out of reach for the common man or woman.

I believe that to do this work, and to do it well, one has to truly have a sense of love and awe for the law, as well as what it can do. Indeed, throughout my life, I have seen its power to transform lives -- for the good or the bad. The simple fact is, in order to extract the best outcomes for one's clients, one must be highly skilled, motivated, and, most of all, love the practice and continued study of the law and its applications. I have this love.