I'm a Lawyer Now

I got sworn in as a lawyer last week. It was a nice ceremony at the Salt Palace in Salt Lake. Christine Durham, Chief Justice of the Utah Supreme Court, said a few words. We all raised our hands and swore to uphold the Utah and the United States Constitution.

It's a pretty cool thing to be a lawyer. I hear quite a few lawyer jokes, but Chief Justice Durham of the Utah Supreme Court said that when a doctor tells her a lawyer joke she makes this response: "While YOUR predecessors [doctors] were still treating people with cobwebs and leeches, MY predecessors [lawyers] were writing the Declaration of Independence." Good point.

One of the great examples, to me, of a revolutionary lawyer fighting for the rule of law is John Adams. John Adams defended the soldiers accused of killing colonists in the Boston Massacre because no one else would do it. Adams later wrote of his defense "It was . . . one of the most gallant, generous, manly and disinterested Actions of my whole Life, and one of the best Pieces of Service I ever rendered my Country." He believed that sentencing the soldiers to death without a fair trial would have been "as foul a Stain upon this Country as the Executions of the Quakers or Witches, anciently."

The crisis in Pakistan this week makes me particularly proud to be a lawyer. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf suspended the Pakistani Constitution on Saturday and fired the Chief Justice of the country's Supreme Court. He also fired any judge who refused to take a new oath. Pakistani lawyers have been a major part of the protests against Musharref's latest actions and many have been clubbed or arrested while protesting.

I hope that I can be a little bit like the Pakistani lawyers protesting this week and the lawyers who helped found the United States. To me being a lawyer means helping people to understand the law and, occasionally, standing up for the rule of law when it is under attack.

Video Games that Don't Feel Like Work

Remember when video games used to be fun? When I was seven years old, my piano teacher had a Nintendo at her house that we were allowed to play while we were waiting for our mothers to pick us up. That was my first experience with video games. All week I would look forward to playing Super Mario Bros. I had dreams about little Luigi bopping mushrooms on the head in the sewers.

Seventeen years later, I admit that I still play video games – but they’ve started to feel more like work than fun. I am a huge college football fan and EA Sports’ NCAA Football series is one of the greatest things that has ever happened to me. Who can resist playing football sports as Reggie Bush or creating a super version of yourself to destroy college defenses on your way to the Heisman Trophy? It is particularly appealing for me because I am so uncoordinated and slow in real life.

But these games have huge learning curves. If you don’t know what bump-and-run coverage is, you probably don’t want to play NCAA Football. It’s going to take you hours of practice to play Halo 3 with your friends.

That’s why I’m so enthralled by the Nintendo Wii. Last night, my wife and I had dinner with a married couple. After watching the Office (classic) we busted out the Wii and we played the Wii Sports bowling game, tennis, and boxing. My wife developed a strategy of constantly punching in the boxing game that was basically unstoppable. Even when I tried to replicate it she beat me soundly.

The Wii is a good, old-fashioned arcade game machine. I’m sure it has difficult games that take hours to master, but we picked it up for the first time last night and got super sweaty trying to beat each other over the head in the boxing game. Seventeen years after my first video game experience, Nintendo has come through again.