Grandpa Knows Best
I wish I could say I write because it’s my passion. I would love to tell people I aspire to be an author or a journalist and that writing is the only way for me to make sense of my thoughts. I used to get embarrassed whenever my friends or my parent’s friends would ask why I applied for the Writing Minor; I used to feel self-conscious that my reasons for writing have little to do with enjoyment. But really thinking through why I write has helped me understand that I can love writing— or what writing will help me accomplish in my life—without being seduced by the actual writing process. I don’t write because I need to write in an, “It’s the only thing that makes sense to me and keeps me sane” kind of way. I write because I want to be a lawyer and in order to be an exceptional lawyer, I need to be an exceptional writer.
My desire to pursue a career in law can be attributed to two individuals: my 5th grade soccer coach and my grandpa. Soccer took up the majority of my free time as an 11-year old. I played every day after school and loved the way it felt to be part of a team. But whenever my coach told the team to do suicide sprints or run laps, they blindly complied. Whenever my coach had to separately ask me to do suicide sprints or run laps—because I didn’t run with my team when he asked the first time—I asked why: “Why do we need to run laps and do suicides, Coach Roy?” “Because I said so. Now stop asking questions and go do a lap.” I always ended up running because I hated getting in trouble, but I made it clear that I did not consider “because I said so” an appropriate response to a question. He made it clear that as an 11-year old playing soccer for fun, it was not my job to ask “why.”
Coach Roy also made this clear to my parents when they sat down with him for the annual parent/coach conference: “Emily’s a great player and a great teammate, but she needs to stop asking so many questions. All she cares about is why I tell them to do anything. She’s gonna be a great lawyer some day.” My parents relayed the information to me—they too found all of my “why” questions at home annoying, though they admired my curiosity—and from that moment on I decided I would try and make Roy’s prediction come true; At only 11-years old, I knew that I wanted to be a lawyer. A job where I get to ask questions and argue for a living? Sounds like a dream.
Once I made this life-changing decision, I went to pick the brain of the only lawyer in my family: my grandpa. Grandpa practiced law in Chicago for almost 60 years and everyone in my family knows he dreams that one of his grandchildren will follow in his footsteps. As I got older and more serious about law, it began to look like I would be the one to make those dreams come true. I started asking my grandpa more specific questions: What law school should I go to? Yale, his alma mater. What grades do I need in college? 4.0, just like him. What’s the one thing I need to be really good at to be a lawyer? Writing. Wait, what? That answer seemed far less obvious to me than the other two.
I know that having the ability to write is important for any field, but when I think about law, writing does not jump to the forefront of my mind. I picture A Few Good Men: Tom Cruise questioning Jack Nicholson on the stand. Jack telling Tom that he “can’t handle the truth” with a jury taking in all the information to make a decision. Tom does not end up winning the case because he had a bunch of experts testify. He won because of his argument. Tom’s argument is so powerful, filled with so much passion and intelligence; that is what the legal field makes me thing about. “Grandpa, do trials like these happen in real life? Trials where a lawyer turns the jury based only on the strength of their argument?” “Sometimes,” my grandpa tells me, “This happens sometimes. But where do you think Tom’s impenetrable argument and thoughtful questioning comes from? I can promise that he didn’t make it up on the spot. You need to know how to write to make an argument as strong as that one.”
Light bulb moment. Of course he didn’t improvise. He had to write it all first. Sure, Tom could captivate any audience with his public speaking ability. But the strength of an argument cannot just come from the power of a person’s presence; it comes from the power of a person’s words. I never associated writing with law because in practice, it doesn’t actually look like writing. It looks like a lawyer standing up in a courtroom in front of a full house trying to make a case. If a litigator hopes to win over a jury, they need to make an irrefutable argument. These arguments may be performed out loud, with lots of carefully selected words to emphasize and overly dramatic hand gestures, but lawyers craft and perfect them on paper first.
At least, that’s what my grandpa tells me. But he has also been retired for a little over 15 years now; what if writing has become less important? Maybe interns and behind-the-scenes employees do all the writing and litigators just perform their words, like actors on a stage. I needed to ask someone else, a practicing lawyer, just to be sure.
Fortunately, I am taking a course this semester that happens to be taught by New York lawyer Aaron Singer, who flies to Ann Arbor every week just to teach the class. After our three-hour lecture one Friday morning I went up to Aaron and asked, “if you had to pick one skill a lawyer needs to standout, what would it be? “The ability to write, hands down.” I didn’t even need to prompt him. He immediately went off on a rant about the importance of writing in the legal field: “Lawyers, and especially litigators [also known as trial lawyers], need to know how to write to protect and articulate their arguments,” he said. “Basically, as a lawyer, I sometimes consider myself a professional writer. I write more than I do anything else.”
As always, it seems Grandpa was right. Maybe I started this paper off with a bit too much cynicism. Maybe I will, in a way, become a professional writer. I think I’ve been struggling to articulate why I write because when I think about writing, I normally think about reading writing. I think about an author writing a novel to be read or a journalist writing an exclusive story to expose. I don’t want people to read what I write; I want them to hear it. I want to go to law school, practice litigation in front of a judge and a jury, defend or prosecute violent criminals, and make a difference with my voice, with spoken words—this is why I write.