What is the Geek Law Student?
Who Am I?
I’m almost a senior citizen who suddenly decided to make a significant change in my life and attend law school. I’m constantly on the hunt for the best tips, tools, and techniques for doing well in both life and law school as a geeky, older, gay married man with ADHD. I should back up a little bit.
I was born in the ’60s, right on the cusp between Baby Boomer and Gen X (late 1964), meaning I share characteristics with both. It also means that now (April 2024), I am on the slide toward turning 60 years old later this year.
When I was young, I went to the University of Colorado, where I met my first boyfriend, and I spent over a decade with him. Sadly, he was a brilliant scientist, a compulsive sex addict, and an amazingly skillful liar. So, in my early 30s, I ended up alone in Huntsville, Alabama. That is a story for another blog because he died a few years ago, and I can finally tell it.
I met my husband a little over a year after the relationship apocalypse, and we’ve been together ever since. For those keeping score, that’s over 25 years. We married ten years ago because we finally could.
Since then, I’ve spent years as an IT analyst & manager, a real estate broker and brokerage owner (which I still do), and now a law student beginning in late August. Along the way, I picked up an MBA from the University of Alabama and am finishing a master’s degree in data analytics.
I Didn’t Know I Could be a Lawyer
I have always been interested in the law but never thought it could be an option. There are no attorneys in my family anywhere. My siblings and I were the first people in our family to get college degrees (and only half of us did that). As far as I know, I’m the first person to earn a master’s degree. Attorneys were mythical creatures prepared from birth to reach an exalted status and put “Esq.” after their names. It wasn’t me.
But the events of the last half-dozen years have forced me to realize that getting rights (like the right to marry) and keeping rights are different things. I don’t have to finish law school and go to work for a civil rights organization (although I’d love to) because defending and protecting happens at every level. Helping an elderly person complete their living will is protecting. Assisting an immigrant on the path to citizenship is defending. Honoring our country’s principles happens in a million tiny ways, everywhere and every day. None of us can be spectators.
We’ll discuss my journey from IT geek to real estate broker to law student, explore the way the law is taught and functions in this country, and discuss the tools I used, will use, and am using now on this journey.
I don’t know how much the school I’m attending will be comfortable with me saying about them — so I’ll leave their name out of it. I may discuss AI in law, but since I don’t know the school’s policies on AI, it may be very theoretical. Hopefully, it will be interesting, no matter where it goes.
