I am going to stray bit from the normal topics within sports that I tend to cover on a weekly basis. For on April 26, 1976, I began a 37 I/2 year journey as a practicing attorney, starting my career as an Assistant Deputy Public Defender in the New Jersey Public Defender’s Appellate Section. That is now 50 years ago.
My first inkling that attorneys did something special came from my parents meeting with their attorney. It was for a will and then a closing on our house in Highland Park. He had an office at home which had plenty of red rope folders strewn around, with an impressive wooden desk and big-backed chair.
I was 4 years old at the time. It seemed to be very important stuff. I never forgot.
My next exposure to the law came from Perry Mason, the late 1950’s drama starring Raymond Burr. Somehow Mason always exposed the real criminal instead of his client being found guilty. I still feel some pangs of sympathy for Harrison Burger, the overwrought prosecutor who repeatedly lost to Mason.
Other shows throughout the years made me think about the law. The Defenders, with Eli Wallach and Robert Reed, based in New York, was another part of my following the law. Whenever I go near the courthouses in Lower Manhattan, that show is what I think of first.
I took note that many successful politicians had legal backgrounds. John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon battled for the presidency in 1960; Kennedy was a Harvard Law grad while Nixon received his law degree from Duke. Robert Kennedy was his brother’s Attorney General.
My father took in a tenant whose office was nearby his dental practice. That tenant was a known politician in Edison and Middlesex County. He was bright and knowledgeable. He was also top of his class at the College of William & Mary and at Georgetown Law School. I admired him.
I knew that I didn’t want to be a dentist. The path I wanted to follow was the law.
Even if I had to learn that, on our cross country trips, the roadside signs calling for the impeachment of Chief Justice Earl Warren were based on desegregation in the South. It was a hot topic—those signs were still dwarfed by the sheer amount of placards advertising Burma Shave. That’s what the Supreme Court did—decide the law for the country if it was questioned.
I was fairly good at writing. Very good at history and current events. With a a nearly-eidetic memory. That helped me get good grades in high school.
My goals were simple from 8th grade on: keep excelling in the classroom and somehow be accepted at my father’s alma mater, Franklin and Marshall College. My 8th grade yearbook covered that and I made good on my wishes.
I majored in Government at F&M, because that’s what many lawyers did and this was what F&M called political science. Outside of a few history courses, this is where I did best.
My G.P.A. was okay. I needed a boost. As a result, I applied to and was accepted as part of the first students F&M sent to the Washington Semester Program at American University. In combination with a summer internship for my congressman (a lawyer from Perth Amboy) which extended into the fall semester, I was exposed to it all—people from around the country who came to Washington to make the place better. So, so many of them were lawyers. And I actually went to the U.S. Supreme Court to watch cases. I was even more hooked.
When it came time for me to take the LSAT, I faced a huge hurdle. I was not a great standardized test taker. I needed to blow the score out of the water.
I did okay, but not well enough. While the classmates got accepted at their choices, I was sitting on the sidelines. Until we received a call from a strange man touting a new law school in Wilmington, Delaware which would take in those who didn’t make the cut at the established schools.
Founder/Dean Alfred Avins sold my father enough to believe that accreditation would happen by the time I would take the bar exam. We said yes, and I was off to Delaware.
I was an above-average student at DLS. I excelled in Medical Malpractice, Torts and a Legislative Internship with the Majority Leader of the Delaware State Senate.
The school reached accreditation two weeks before the bar exam. Somehow, I passed the exam—the standardized Multi-State be damned.
Then came the onerous wait for a job. We graduated after the bar exams were done—a measure to protect us in case the American Bar Association was late with its verdict on our status.
The interviews were numerous. In D.C. and New Jersey, the only state I sought licensing. Just as numerous were the rejections. I lived at home. My parents worried. Doubt crept into my mind. Had the three years at DLS been worth it? Would I have a law career?
Then suddenly I received a phone call from the New Jersey Office of the Public Defender, Appellate Section in East Orange. Would I come in for an interview? The answer was of course yes.
What got me into the good graces of the man in charge of the office were three things: Did I like to work? Did I like to drink ( I said yes even though I was nearly done with that phase of my life)? And had I really played college baseball—they needed a good player on their team which competed in the Essex County Lawyer’s League.
With that all answered in the affirmative, my resume was forwarded to Trenton. I sat through two interviews from higher-ups in the administration of Stanley Van Ness, who held the title as Public Defender.
Marcia Richman and John Cannel gave the green light to my application. I later learned that I was a test case for DLS as the first hire from the school for the OPD. Had I known that, I might have freaked out.
Here was this 25 year old, who never had written a brief in law school, let alone take a legal writing course of some substance, now a part of an elite unit which would elevate to the best in the land when it came to defending the death penalty.
I struggled and stayed late, mentored by the Deputy and his assistant. Bill Norris and Cynthia Jacob were essential to my growth as an attorney. Two very smart and talented individuals who took the time to teach me.
I guess that I did well enough that I reached the New Jersey Supreme Court twice with cases. While the outcomes didn’t go my client’s way, I thought that this was amazing—here I am arguing before one of the top state Supreme Courts in the country. From a school which wasn’t even ten years old. I did go on to win a few cases in the Appellate Division which made the law books.
The powers that be in the OPD shifted from time to time. So did my duties.
I was given the opportunity to run the Designated Counsel Section within the Appellate Section for conflict cases. I worked hard. Days and nights. Weekends aplenty. Understaffed and over utilized. In freezing cold and incredible heat when the heating and A/C systems routinely failed.
I loved that job. Those who supervised me and those who worked with and for me from the private sector did some really special things. I kept the courts happy, which meant that I kept the OPD happy.
My performance must have been good, because I received a promotion to a higher managerial title. It’s also through the DCS that I met an attorney who had a cousin who she perceived I might like. That blind date in Glen Ridge has lasted for over 44 years, with two children and a son-in-law.
After sixteen years first in East Orange (I met my editor there) and then Newark, it came time for me to move on when new leadership feared my entrenchment would be an obstacle. I called in my favors and landed in the Union Trial Region in Elizabeth, which covered the county I resided in.
Juvenile law found me and I found Juvenile law. We had a happy marriage for 22 years before I retired—again the result of a change in management which would have made my job as the untitled leader of the unit even more intolerable.
I must have made a lasting impression on my colleagues, opposing counsel, support staff, probation and even the judges who passed through Juvenile. While I always thought I could have done a better job or been more acutely aware of the Rules of Evidence, somehow I escaped major errors, didn’t accumulate any complaints and did my best for the clients whom I served and for the parents who loved them despite the circumstances.
Hard to believe that was 50 years ago. It may have been a meritorious legal career. But in retrospect, even over 13 years removed from representing minors charged in complaints that would be crimes if adults, it seems like it was yesterday that a young man, not knowing what he was really doing, began representing others.
I guess I am still that legal geek who watched LA Law, Boston Legal and a whole host of lawyer-driven TV shows, looking for reality in their cases. Or who devoured John Grisham books about legal heroes. I marvel at how many law school graduates went on to other careers, using their knowledge and insight to succeed. And I still follow the opinions of the U.S. and New Jersey Supreme Courts.
Every once in a while, I have dreams of trying juvenile cases before a judge. It’s amazing how many strategies I never knew would work, did, and then some. In my sleep, I win every case. That’s not at all the way it worked.
I don’t regret being retired. It was time to move on to new adventures. This weekly blog is the result of my twin passions: the law and sports. From this perspective, it allows me to look back fondly as to my time as a Public Defender and the three careers I forged within the agency.
The journey of the boy from Highland Park became complete on April 26,1976. Even with his love of sports, the siren call of the legal profession determined his path forward all those years ago. It was then up to the man to chart his own course.
