ABA Experience Magazine Lawson Interview

Since ABA’s Experience magazine is behind a paywall I let LLRX.com reprint their January interview with me. I enjoyed the interview, especially since I got to acknowledge the other ABA members who had made an impression on me over the years, including:

•  Richard Granat, winner of the ABA Legal Rebel Award for his work in improving access to justice
• Greg Siskind, a top immigration lawyer also known for his leadership in lawyer marketing and innovative use of technology
• Kevin O’Keefe, the uber lawyer/blogger and 
• Dennis Kennedy, longtime author of the ABA Journal IT column, now a podcaster and law school professor.

I also talked a little bit about how I happened to become a lawyer:

Sometimes, I think it’s a wonder that I became a lawyer at all. I grew up in the West Virginia coal fields. As the New York Times said of my home, “McDowell County, the poorest in West Virginia, has been emblematic of entrenched American poverty for more than a half-century.” An academic study concluded that of 3,142 counties in the United States, McDowell County ranked last in life expectancy.

Coal mining is not a lucrative line of work, and the cyclical nature of the business meant that whenever my father was laid off, we survived on welfare and food stamps. We did not have an indoor bathtub or toilet until I was 14 years old. I don’t remember seeing a dentist until I left the coal fields and got a job.

McDowell County might not be the best launching pad for a professional career, but I was fortunate to have an exceptional high school teacher, Freida Riley. One of her students, Homer Hickam, became a NASA engineer and wrote about her in his memoir Rocket Boys. This memoir was later adapted into the 1999 movie October Sky, featuring Laura Dern as this inspiring teacher. The National Museum of Education’s Freida J. Riley Teacher Award recognizes, each year, “an American teacher who overcomes adversity or makes an enormous sacrifice in order to positively impact students.”

She definitely had a positive impact on me. I might never have gone to college, much less become a lawyer, without her influence.