| stable career with
more job security than sales, and I felt I needed stability in my life in
order to be happy. So I ignored my father's advice to go directly into sales
in the real world and went to law school instead. "By the time I was considering leaving the law in the early '80s, the same organizational chaos I had sought to avoid was appearing in the legal business. Partners were jumping from firm to firm. Firms were failing, and the reality was that no matter how great your legal talent, your prospects were limited, at best, if you couldn't bring substantial business to your firm. Another reason I chose law school was that as a young man, I had come to know several professional athletes who, at that time, were driven more by pride and fan appreciation than by money. They told me that their long-term careers and survival were in the hands of the lawyers and agents who wrote their agreements. It seemed to me that the lawyers were the ones who, through their talent and brains, were really in control. "Further, I had several political science professors at Northwestern University who actually believed that there were right answers in the law, and that through careful drafting and craftsmanship, confusion could be eliminated and order and control would result. It's important to remember that those were the days in which lawyers and doctors were considered almost infallible, before it became clear that they too were simply human. "The only two alternatives to law school which I really thought I had following college were going to |