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Advice to a Young Man Interested in Going into Law
A twelve year-old boy wrote a letter to Justice Felix Frankfurter requesting advice on the ways to start preparing while still in junior high school. Frankfurter responded:
My dear Paul:
No one can be a truly competent lawyer unless he is a cultivated man. If I were you, I would forget all about any technical preparation for the law. The best way to prepare for the law is to come to the study of the law as a well-read person. Thus alone can one acquire the capacity to use the English language on paper and in speech and with the habits of clear thinking which only a truly liberal education can give. No less important for a lawyer is the cultivation of the imaginative faculties by reading poetry, seeing great paintings, in the original or in the easily available reproductions, and listening to great music. Stock your mind with the deposit of much good reading, and wide and deepen your feelings by experiencing vicariously as much as possible the wonderful mysteries of the universe, and forget all about your future career. With good wishes,
Sincerely yours,
Felix Frankfurter
Change in course
Lately, I’ve been inactive in this blog, and one of the main reasons for this was my plan to obtain a Juris Doctor. After being involved in Internet businesses for the past eight years, I’ve been able to appreciate the current legal structures (or lack of) and the scarcity of good lawyers who understand what is going on in the World Wide Web.
I still remember how one of the best law firms failed to understand the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, when my lawyer sent their client a C&D back in 2003. Much of the ignorance on Cyberlaw still permeates the legal community. And much of this is due to a lack of understanding on how the Internet works, from a consumer and commercial point of view.
I’ve just been accepted to the only Law School I was interested in, and the only one I applied to. For the next 3 and a half years, I will be building the skills necessary to put my grain of salt in the improvement of the necessary legal structures to support a safer and more efficient commercial operation through the net. So, look out for more legally oriented blog posts dealing with domains and internet business.
Rafael Sosa's Weblog 