Staying Off the Roof

Brutally cold weather has swept through the northeastern United States over the past few days. The AFC championship game in Pittsburgh was played in single digit temperature, with a wind chill below zero. A picture on the Internet showed a car in New York City completely encased in ice after a water pipe broke. This part of Florida has been cold, too, with temperatures dipping into the 20s at night.

Last week, a professor gave our class one of the best reasons for going to law school that I have heard in a while. He told our class about watching a construction worker walking around on top of a roof near his office. A harness and tether laid on the roof, but the worker was not using them. Perhaps the harness was heavy and uncomfortable. It was a hot day. The professor then began to explain some of the legal consequences if the worker happened to fall and be injured or killed.

"I used to tell people," he said, "that I went to law school so that I did not have to go up on roofs."

I had to smile at the simple honesty of his reasoning. It made me think about one of the reasons that I enrolled in law school.

In the not too distant past, I was employed by the U.S. Postal Service as a mail carrier in the Washington, DC area. Without getting into too many details, it was not a job that I enjoyed or that I was very good at, though I gained a new respect for the people who do that kind of work.

Working out of the station in northern Virginia, I was required to put in 10 or 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, doing heavy lifting all day long. My weight was 155 lbs. when I started the job. After six months, it was down to 135 lbs. And then there was the cold. Trying to do all that lifting of endless crates of mail in a bone chilling wind, trying to finger through stacks for individual magazines or letters when I could no longer feel my fingers, always being told "Go faster. You have to move faster," was too much. I opted to go back to school.

Last weekend, I saw a picture on the Internet of a mail carrier in Maine, bundled up and trying his best to do the job in the elements. It was more than sympathy I felt for him. I was genuinely empathetic.

So, I suppose I could say one of my reasons for going to law school was so I didn't have to deliver mail in the cold.

Part of my motivation as a lawyer will be to do a good job for working people like the guy in Maine when he comes into my office. I was fortunate to be born with a high enough IQ to get into law school. I was fortunate to be raised in an environment that allowed me to receive the education that I needed to get into law school. When my roof needs to be repaired, or I use the Post Office to send a package somewhere in the dead of winter, I realize that service is being performed by people whose job I would not want and that I probably could not do very well.

I can be a good lawyer, though, and fight a good battle for the mail carrier or construction worker when he or she comes into my office with a legal problem. That is my arena, my sphere.

Until Next Time,

Nathan Marshburn