As I walked into the small conference room, two pleasingly plump ageless black ladies sitting side by side to my right at the long table looked up at me expectantly.  She sat nearer to me on my left taking no heed at all.

She was younger, dressed in black and, most notably, desperately clutching a big black purse lying in front of her on the table.

All three were there seeking my help as an attorney to get her – the clutched purse lady – a divorce and child support.  The first woman to my right was Kaysha’s (not her real name) Momma and the next her Auntie.  They were sisters who apparently traveled as twins, although they weren’t.

Kaysha was, though, but her twin sister died at birth, so she had been raised as an only child.  

The mama and auntie did all of the talking, and there was a lot of it, but Kaysha rarely even looked up, much less saying anything, even when I prodded her.  I found out all of the particulars, though, a variation on a story I’d heard many times over in divorce actions.  They all ran to a common theme.

 She was 37 years old, had three nearly grown children, a husband who was emotionally abusive to the max who had left them and taken up with a younger woman by whom he had two more children.  She got nothing from him except grief.

She was without hope, except for her Momma.

Her mama, it seems, was a gambler who actually won.  She was either a gambling genius or extremely lucky, I thought, as she pulled out of her own large purse a slew of 1099s showing gambling winnings, lotto winnings and bingo winnings.  She strictly played numbers, she said, and didn’t have a clue about horses.  Just had an instinct for numbers.  Winning numbers.

Momma had paid for Kaysha’s little house, a car for her and the oldest grandson, and for Kaysha to go to cosmetology school to learn to become a hairdresser.  It was to no avail, though, because Kaysha had been diagnosed with debilitating depression and was only able to work for one week before having to give it up.

She was currently on disability, going to the mental health clinic once a week and devouring dozens of pills a day.  They filled her purse, spilling out on the table when I asked what she was taking.  She was barely functional and constantly being worn down by the missing, but not completely gone, husband.

He had a good paying job there in New Orleans with good benefits.  His wages could be garnished, if necessary, to provide child support for her three kids if he balked.  She could get a divorce, too.  I’d see to both, I told her. 

We ended our session with me setting out all I was going to do in what order and what I would need from them.  I also told them they could call me whenever they had any questions or needed anything.  

The very last thing I did that morning was probably the important thing I may have done during my legal career, but more as a woman and as a Christian, than as an attorney.  I turned to Kaysha and asked her to look up at me.

I looked her directly in her eyes and said, "When I was your age – 37 – I had three nearly grown children and a very abusive husband.  I had no education, couldn’t get out of my marriage because of health problems, and was deeply depressed.  I was just like you."

I told her that since then I had gone to college and gotten a degree, graduating with straight A’s, gotten a divorce, finished raising my kids, found true love, married again and gone to law school.  If I can do that, I told her, you have hope and a future in your life.

It took several months for me to accomplish getting her the divorce (which didn’t take long), negotiating child support with her husband’s attorney and the court and seeing her on her way.  I received many phone calls from her at first, less later, and saw her once in a while.  It was an amazing sight to watch how much she changed for the better each time I saw her.  She started doing her hair, polishing her nails, dressing in bright flowerdy dresses and wearing high heels.

She got a new beau, was working and not taking pills any more.  Everyone in the office noticed the changes when she would come in.  I was so happy for her and glad for whatever part I had in it.

Her mama called me toward the end to thank me for helping her.  Then, she confirmed what I hoped was true.  She told me that every time Kaysha had called me through all of those months being uncertain or afraid or down, she was always lifted up and in better spirits after I talked with her.  She said I’d made a huge difference in Kaysha’s life for the better.

You know, I used to stupidly (I think now) think – for years, actually – that as a Christian, we had to be great "models" of goodness and strength to everyone around us.  But, what I found to be true, instead, is that it is in our own weaknesses and failures, our hard times, that we best can relate to anyone.   We must be transparent and let God shine through.

 You’ve been wanting some of my legal career stories, this has been the one for today.  I’ve got plenty more – some hilarious, some sad, all sorts – so I’ll share some of those with you, too, this year.  Okay?!

For today – find someone you can be transparent with.  Open.  Honest.  Sticking your neck out to relate.  God will give the increase.

Cheers & Blessings to you all today!  Dee

I felt very moved by the whole experience and pondered my abilities to fulfill the oath/affirmation I took before the Louisiana Supreme Court as I was admitted to the Louisiana Bar.

My 16"x25" Louisiana license to practice law reads:

the Honorable Pascal F. Calogero, Jr. Chief Justice
the Honorable Walter F. Marcus, Jr. Associate Justice
the Honorable James L. Dennis Associate Justice
the Honorable Jack Crozier Watson Associate Justice
the Honorable Harry T. Lemmon Associate Justice
the Honorable Luther F. Cole Associate Justice
the Honorable Pike Hall, Jr. Associate Justice

of the Supreme Court.

It is hereby Certified That

Dee O’Neil Andrews

Esquire, after examination by the Examining Committee, was found well and sufficiently qualified to practice as Attorney and Counselor at Law, in the several Courts of the State, and was admitted, licensed and sworn accordingly.

Given under our Hands and Seals at the City of New Orleans, this sixteenth day of October in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and ninety-two and in the two hundred and seventeenth year of the Independence of the Untied States of America.

[Seal of the Supreme Court of the State of Louisiana on the left - the Justices' signatures on the right.]

Supreme Court of the State of Louisiana 

I, Dee O’Neil Andrews, do solemnly swear or affirm I will support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of Louisiana; I will maintain the respect due to courts of justice and judicial officers; I will not counsel or maintain any suit or proceeding  which shall appear to me to be unjust, or any defense except such as I believe to be honestly debatable under the law of the land; I will employ for the purpose of maintaining the causes confided to me such means only as are consistent with truth and honor, and will never seek to mislead the judge or jury by any artifice or false statement of fact or law; I will maintain the confidence and preserve inviolate the secrets of my client, and will accept no compensation in connection with a client’s business except from the client or with the client’s knowledge and approval; I will abstain from all offensive personality, and will advance no fact prejudicial to the honor or reputation of a party or witness, unless required by the justice of the cause with which I am charged; I will never reject, from any consideration personal to myself, the cause of the defenseless or oppressed, or delay any person’s cause for lucre or malice.

[My signature on the right.]
Sworn to or affirmed in open court, at the City of New Orleans,
on this the sixteenth day of October, A.D. 1992. 

[Signature of the Clerk of Court.]

I did not know it at the time, but I would be appearing before the seven justices of the Louisiana Supreme Court again in less than two months to argue a case I was working for and with another attorney.  I was working on a Writ of Certiorari to the Court in a case the other attorney had lost at trial and had lost at the appellate level.  Neither he, nor my boss "Tim" had ever had a writ of certiorari granted by the Louisiana Supreme Court, so when mine was accepted soon after I was admitted to the bar, it was a huge deal.

More about that later, though.  For today – think about the words of the oath/affirmation above and share with me in comments below how that fits in with what you think about attorneys in general and/or those you know personally and if this changes your perspective any.  I consider the charges I took to be highly moral and relevant to my life in every aspect.  Going to law school and becoming an attorney added new dimensions to my life that were not there before.  I gained great respect for our courts and legal system overall and those who practice law and are officers of the court.  

Your thoughts?!  Please comment.

Thanks!  Dee

[Note:  I was going to include in this post today my experience in taking the Louisiana bar exam, but the post got too long.  So, I copied that material over to a draft of a new post for next time.  It was harrowing, so hope you'll stay on board and keeping reading.]

My last semester of law school was a bit easier school wise, but really hectic in every other way.  I was working mightily on my law review article, working sometimes long hours clerking and still sending out tons of updated resumes.  I spent a lot of time going by the career development office and scanning the bulletin boards for firms interviewing on and off campus.  I signed up for as many as I could and had the chance to interview with several good firms, which was exciting.  Making law review had given me a big boost.

I seemed to do really well in the interviews and felt good about all of them.

An aside:  One thing I had done earlier that third year was get my hair cut.  My boss, "Tim", was really blown away by my new look and thought it took 10 years off my age (I was now 47).  I don’t know about that, but I felt more professional.  See below and judge for yourself – what do you think?

  Me & Tom my second year.

This is me at the end of my third year of law school.

Be that as it may, by the end of the semester after a good many interviews with firms and judges, I did not get one job offer to be an associate attorney, other than the one Tim made me to stay on with him at about a third to half less than most of the firms were paying and with no benefits, whatsoever. 

I’ve always firmly believed, although no one would or could say it, that I wasn’t hired by any of the firms I interviewed with because of my age, despite my good experience (see my resume under the tab at the top of this page).  I mean, they could hire starving young associates who were practically half my age who could – and would – work the 60 to 80 hours a week it was probably going to require to learn the ropes, to keep up and to get ahead as a lawyer in a big firm.  I think I could have done it, too, at that time, but it would have been harder for me and the firms probably knew that.  I mean – let’s face it – why hire someone older (they couldn’t ask my age, of course, and I don’t know how old they thought I really was – see above, what do you think – who has less work years ahead to get it all together, when you can hire someone really young and have them well on their way in a legal career by 30.   

More about that later – back to the story.

I had a while still to think about job offers because first I had to graduate, take the bar and pass it.

I didn’t have much time to think about it, though, because the entire spring semester, besides everything else,  "Tim" was preparing for a big multi-party trial and I was deeply involved.  The trial was set and took place the entire week between the time school was out (the middle of May) and graduation.  As usual, I sat at Tim’s table before the judge with all of the attorneys.  It was exciting working with him and being included in everything.  It made up for all of the long hours for months on end to get ready.

By the time the long hours every day before and at trial were over, it was time for graduation.  I was thrilled that my Dad, Mom and sister were able to come from Abilene, my daughter Rebecca and her husband and babies came from Dallas and my son Mark was there (one semester shy of his graduation from Mississippi State University).  Tom’s daughters, Kristine and Kim, came, too, and it was a joyous time.

Here’s Tom and me at graduation.

We had a big informal graduation party – an outdoor crawfish boil – that afternoon in Slidell in Tom’s sister’s big backyard and had a blast.  We invited our next door neighbors from our little duplex, friends from the newspaper in Picayune, and old time friends from years before.   We also invited new friends from my work with Tim and he and his wife came, as well.  

It had been a really tough three plus years, but I’d done it and survived intact.  In many ways, I felt I was a better person for having gone through so much, gotten more education and having had so many great new experiences.

But, there still was a mountain ahead of me to climb.  I had to intensely prepare for and take the Louisiana bar exam.  I’ll share that experience with you next time.

To Be Continued . . .

After I write each of the posts in this series, I think of all of the important things I left out that you should  really know about to truly understand the stresses, complexities and competitiveness of law school.  And Loyola, being a private Catholic university, was relatively speaking low key I was told.

That may have been, but it certainly ended up being much more intense and demanding than either Tom or I had envisioned ahead of time.  Having never thought about going into law or looking in to it until just before I jumped in, it came as a rude awakening.  Yet, I got caught up in it.  I had to because there were no other choices for me when all was said and done.  

I was trying to get out of a high stress work environment handling personal injury claims for a national insurance company.  I thought, based on most of the Mississippi gulf coast "good old boy" lawyers I worked with, that I could become a lawyer like they were (or seemed to be) and earn a reasonable living while enjoying life, as well.  Unfortunately, that was not to be the case.

When I first started law school, the stresses were on being able to pass and then doing well in school.  But, by the second semester first year, the focus started shifting to seeking employment – first as a law clerk and then as an attorney.  From the time my first clerking job fell through that second semester, my number one goal (besides getting through school) was finding a job with a good, well paying law firm or clerking (later working) for an appellate judge.  I was incurring a tremendous amount of school debt, as were most students, and pay back time was fast approaching.

Over the last 2 1/2 years of law school, even though I’d started clerking for an attorney, I wasn’t making much.  So I sent out dozens and dozens and dozens of resumes and sought coveted interviews both in New Orleans and over on the Mississippi gulf coast, where we’d been living and where I had worked.  I can’t tell you how many near misses I went through.  It was very disheartening, to say the least. 

By the time I started my third and last year of law school, the job hunting among students had reached frenzy level.  I was in a better position than some because I had been clerking for"Tim" (not his real name) in a general civil practice (as opposed to criminal) by this time for a little over a year.  I had become his right hand "woman"  in every phase of his practice.  Even though I was still a law clerk, judges let me "cross the bar" to sit with Tim in trials to help him as second chair and he took me everywhere with him.  I was getting tons of practical experience and loving it.

 As I started my third year, he was talking about me staying on as his associate, but also knew that with my abilities I needed to seek out the big firms, so encouraged me to do so.

You see – at the beginning of third year, my GPA was high enough (I did better each semester all the way through school than the semester before – I really took to law school) that I "graded on" to Loyola (of New Orleans) Law Review, the prestigious publication put out by those selected in each class who were in the top 10% of the class at the end of their first year.   I wasn’t in the top 10% of my class (I graduated in the top 18%, though), but had now passed what was the top 10% GPA in our class at the end of our first year.

This was a huge deal in hunting for a job and I was ecstatic.  But, of course, it also meant a lot more work.

I had to come up with a good idea for a paper, get a faculty adviser and turn in the finished product to the law review editors for a grade and possible publication in the quarterly Loyola Law Review.  By about the same time, Tom & I realized that I was probably going to have to stay in the New Orleans area to earn a decent living practicing law, so I started taking Civil Law courses to be better able to pass the Louisiana Bar the following summer.  And, of course, I was still clerking 20 hours a week, plus full time during the summers and in between semesters.

I can’t remember for sure when I had to turn in my heavily footnoted (and heavily edited for length) paper for law review, but think it was around the end of that first semester, third year.  Because of a case I’d been working on with Tim that dealt with paternity and because at that time (1992) DNA testing was such a new and somewhat controversial subject, Tim had suggested that I write my law review paper about it.  So, I did and it was accepted for publication for the summer 1992 issue of Loyola Law Review!  Yea!

Now, I had real work to do on it.

The title of the paper was "DNA and DADS: Considerations for Louisiana in Using DNA Blood Tests to Determine Paternity."  I know that seems rather archaic now, but at the time it was very new and a hot topic.  And, in doing my extensive legal research, there really weren’t a lot of cases on it or legislation on it nationwide.  (You also have to understand that I was working on my very first computer – a PC, but not yet with Windows – on a blue screen in WordPerfect 5.0.  What a pain.)

It was a really interesting paper to do, but what a huge pain.  I had an editor and must have gone through at least five or six edits (at least) to try to get the thing ready to publish.  It was a doctoral level, technical, legal paper and every citation, every word, every footnote, had to be absolutely perfect.  I worked on it all through the spring semester and into the summer doing corrections and re-writes of certain parts.  I remember working on it after graduation while I was taking the prep course in June for the Louisiana Bar, which was going to be in July.

I’m going to stop here for now.  Will tell you about coming down to the home stretch, graduation and taking the bar exam next time, okay?  I’ll also tell you more later about the content of my law review article because I went back in Louisiana history as far as I could go to see what the legal cases and legislative views and rules had always been.  It was fascinating.

If you’re still not bored - 

To Be Continued . . . 

Part 4 -  Learning the Ropes, Both Law School Wise & Practically as a Law Clerk

I haven’t mentioned this yet, but in law school you absolutely must be in study groups, share notes with other students from your classes and go over and over old tests from years before.  I didn’t know anyone who tried to do it all on their own.  It was impossible.

I was commuting over 30 miles one way, so didn’t take as much advantage of study groups as many did, but certainly did my share.  We were all going to school five days a week and I would spend my time during the days in between classes studying with others and/or in the library.  

By my second semester, I began to feel a bit of a routine about it all, which helped mentally, and tried to concentrate on one day at a time.  That was all the brain could handle.

That was not entirely possible, though, because early into the semester, as soon as grades came out, most os us started looking for summer clerking jobs to bring in some much needed money and also to start learning some of the practicalities of being a lawyer.   I was no exception.

I was lucky in getting a tip from an old friend about a very small "family" law firm in the French Quarter that  might be looking for a summer law clerk.  I called the older man who was head of the firm (his attorney son worked with him), interviewed with him and he hired me on the spot for the summer, at least, if not longer.  I was really excited and all set.  I was way ahead of the game, I thought, and now could concentrate on school.

Our class was all taking Moot Court second semester, which meant that we were all given an involved "fake" case to work with to both argue orally, as we would if it were on appeal, and to write an appellate brief for using real federal law. We had to do extensive legal research to use as the foundation for both.

I did "okay" in my oral argument (we were all given one side or the other to argue), but felt a lot more comfortable with the writing part.  Except that I’d never written anything before in my life using legal arguments.  Further, we had a strict word limit within which to work.  This was hard stuff.

During this time – in late spring – as I was working so hard on my preparation for both oral argument and writing my brief, I got home one afternoon and Tom told me to sit down – he had some really bad news to tell me.  He had learned that the attorney I’d gotten the summer law clerking job with had just killed himself.  We couldn’t believe it.  Now I was way behind in trying to find work for summer.  This was a blow.

So, I started looking for another clerking position, while finishing up the semester.  My brief was coming along well, but was way too long.  With Tom’s help, I did edit after edit after edit.  No single word was beyond being cut.  I finally got it finished with all of its requirements, had bound copies made and got it turned in by the strict deadline.  We turned them in under fake names to be judged objectively.  Then we waited.

It was about the middle of the summer before we all found out how we’d done on our briefs.  I was astonished to find out that not only had I made an A on mine, it was judged as being the Best Appellate Brief in our entire class!  Tom and I were thrilled!  The school put copies of it in the library for the next year’s class to use as an example of how to write a good Moot Court brief.  I also received the Jurisprudence Award from the school.

What a great ending to the first year of law school.

Meanwhile, I was doing piddle work for an insurance agent in New Orleans because I’d not been able to find anything else.  What a rip.  Then, about the end of July, I found an "ad" on the board at school of an attorney looking for a student to do some legal research for him, possibly leading to a clerking position.  I called him and went to see him.  I did the research, he was pleased and hired me to be his law clerk.  I wasn’t being paid much – much less than the big firms paid – but I had a job and looked forward to clerking.

We worked it out for me to work for him 15 to 20 hours a week after school started back and so now I had even more to do.  Plus, I found that the second year of law school was by far the hardest year subject wise, study wise and test wise.  The second semester – spring semester – was particularly hard.  I was taking Corporations, Constitutional Law, Administration of Criminal Justice, Income Taxation and Secured Transaction.  I also took three what they called "skills" classes on a pass/fail basis.  (We had to have a total of six or more of them.)  Yet, I ended that semester with a 3.571 GPA. 

Tom and I had some fun, too, though, that semester, I have to say.  So, I’ll leave you with this.  Here’s my all time favorite picture of me and Tom together.  It’s a candid snapshot of the two of us dancing at my second year law school prom in April that year.  (That was my first school dance, ever, and here I was with my new husband!)  What do you think?  Do we look happy, or what?

Y’all leave me your comments and let me know if you’re getting bored yet by my legal "memoirs," okay?!  Please!  

Thanks!  Dee 

I’m not very far into my story of my life and career in law, but want to digress a bit, already.

I left you last time with my five month whirlwind, somewhat impulsive decision to go to law school at 44, doing all that needed to be done in a rush toward achieving that goal and then actually doing it.  Today, I want to delve into more of the reasoning I used at the time and how, in retrospect, I found out that I couldn’t DO what I had done, nor, possibly, would I have wanted to.

As things turned out, Tom and I were both incredibly naive about what all going to law school and practicing law really entailed.  Especially, at that age and being diabetic.  But, then, isn’t life always that way.  You go through the difficult experiences and testing first, and then you learn the lessons.   

For one thing, I had not graduated from college that long ago – only three years before, at 40 – and that was a really "miraculous" God-driven experience.  In fact, so much so that I still to this day consider that accomplishment to be, by far, the proudest moment of my life.  So, to understand all that I’m going to share with you about my law career, you must read my blog post about it from November 21, 2005.  (Take the couple of minutes to read it.  I’ll wait.)

After all that had happened in my college experience (and many others), I trusted God to work things out in my life for good, believing that if things were meant to happen, they would.  So, I was not really surprised when they did.

It wasn’t until after I was in law school that I found out that students took expensive weeks long study courses to prepare for the LSAT, took the LSAT multiple times over many months to increase their chances of passing and/or getting scholarships, sent their scores to multiple law schools (to have a better chance of being accepted), and then had to wait for up to a year to be admitted.  Me – I took the LSAT once – in June – at the very latest time it was offered that summer, got accepted mid-August, within a week and a half after Loyola received my test score, and did well enough to get a 1/2 tuition scholarship.  I’d never even heard of the LSAT until a couple of months before I took it!

Well, as you’ve surmised by now, I was obviously what they call "book smart."  That, coupled with my naivety and confidence in the Lord guiding me, allowed me to accomplish a lot of things not many could do.  Thanks be to God, is all I can say.

Being book smart, plus having been through some really difficult and/or horrendous life experiences, including the stressful job I had at the time I started thinking about law school, I was a much more centered, calm student than most of them I knew.  Don’t get me wrong – law school was incredibly difficult and stressful.  It certainly wasn’t for the weak or faint of heart.  It was hard and it called for study and endless reading 24/7, pretty much, for three years.

The level of intelligence and quality of minds of the students constantly intrigued me.  I was in a class of about 200 to 225 and they were all superior students or else they wouldn’t have made it into law school.  I was impressed – and happy to be among such a number from all over the U. S. and beyond.  Men and women of all ages and backgrounds were there and the journalist in me loved all of their stories.

I certainly felt humbled by the company I was in.  For once, I had no expectations of being the best, or even trying to be, although that had always been a goal before.  I was going to be happy just to get through school with a decent GPA and graduate.  

Another big shocker came to me after I had started school when I found out (dummy me!) that in law school, you only have one test per class a semester – at the very end.  Ninety-nine percent of those were questions requiring lengthy essay answers!  You had to study a whole semester’s worth of material in each class and learn it all well enough to take one make-or-break essay written test and pass.  Without having a clue, especially the first year, first semester, about what you were doing.  It was highly stressful and intimidating and went on for the entire three years.

I finished the first semester with a 2.68 GPA, which I was not to happy with, but glad the semester was over.  I had managed to get that far without totally wiping out or giving up, and was determined to do better ahead.  Which I did.  But, I had some big surprises coming – good and bad – by the end of my second semester and summer.

To Be Continued . . .

 As I sat and talked with the Gulfport plaintiff attorney in the late winter of 1989, I told him I had recently thought about becoming a lawyer, but didn’t know anything about it or how I could do it, if I did.

He said he was a graduate of Loyola School of Law in New Orleans and that at Loyola you could work during the day and go to law school at night, completing the degree in four years instead of three.  You could also take the "Common Law" curriculum, in addition to the "Civil Law" curriculum for those who intended to practice law in Louisiana, which is under the Napoleanic Civil Code.  The other 49 states practice law under the English based Common Law.

I was intrigued and began asking more.  And there was a lot more.

You first had to take and pass the LSAT – Law School Admissions Test – used by law schools to determine who they accepted as students.  Some schools required higher scores than others.  I’d never heard of it. 

So, the next weekend, Tom & I went to a bookstore and checked out the big fat heavy graduate study guides for tests such as LSAT.  As I read through the LSAT book about the kind of testing it covered (see the LSAT link above), I told Tom "This sounds just like me!"   The book also listed tons of ABA accredited law schools, had acceptance dates and had five long comprehensive practice tests to take.  I bought it.

I spent my 44th birthday, March 2, driving over to Loyola in New Orleans to talk with the admissions counselor.  He told me that since I had a 4.0 GPA undergrad if I made a certain score on the LSAT I would be entitled to a full tuition scholarship at Loyola.  For each single point off that score, I would still be granted a scholarship, but only 3/4, 1/2 or 1/4 tuition.  Below that – no help.

He also said that most law students clerked in the summers after the first year for law firms and made good money.  The counselor advised against working during the school year itself, but many students did it.  You could also borrow money to go to law school if you met the requirements, which weren’t that hard to meet at that level (I didn’t think).

 Tom & I talked until late that night.  It was a hard decision to make with lots of variables still looming, but we decided to go for it.  We decided, based on all I’d learned, that the thing to do was to jump in full time and get it over with in 3 years.  The opportunities for funding and making connections sounded good.

 I really wanted to start law school that August, which Loyola would allow if everything else fell in place, but that was less than six months away.  The biggest obstacle was taking the LSAT and passing because there was only one more testing time left – in early June in New Orleans.

 I signed up for it and to have my score sent to both Loyola and Tulane Law School.  I also ordered some more practice tests from LSAT itself and began studying hard for the test every spare moment I could find over the next three months.  I was determined to not only pass it, but to do well enough to get full tuition scholarship.

I did pretty well on the practice tests, scoring a little higher each time, but not as well as I thought I should be doing.   When I actually took the LSAT, I felt pretty good about it, but had no clue about what my score would be.  I just kept praying about it, but didn’t have time to really think about it a whole lot.

You see, a couple of weeks later I had to have a hysterectomy, had major complications and spent 12 days in the hospital over in Slidell, four of them in ICU.   I was off work seven weeks – the entire summer – recuperating and checking the mail every day for my LSAT scores.  It seemed forever, but I finally got them the 8th of August.  I passed!  Not only that, I did well enough that Loyola would give me a 1/2 tuition scholarship if they accepted me into their program.  But, time was running out.  Fast.

It was another week and a half before I got the acceptance letter from Loyola to start law school – in less than two weeks.  I hadn’t even been back to work yet and would need to turn in two weeks notice.  Plus, I had to have a student loan to be able to register for school.  I had a lot to do.

I went back to work for the first time the next Monday (school events were to start later that week!) and turned in my notice.  Thankfully, which I’d been hoping, they told me to go ahead and clear all of my things out right then and they would send me my last two weeks pay.  

Tom and I started looking for inexpensive rentals in Slidell, where we would be 35 miles northeast across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans for me and 20 miles south of Picayune for him to go to work.  I also applied for a student loan because Loyola is a private school and expensive.

We found a little duplex with paper thin walls, but couldn’t move in until the first of September.  So I registered for school in the Common Law program (we fully intended to come back over to the gulf coast of Mississippi), bought over $500 worth of books, and started while still living in Long Beach, which was about an hour and a half away.  At the same time, Mark left to start his second year at Mississippi State.

I got my first semester’s student loan just in time to pay for what was left of my tuition with enough to spare  to help with frugal living for a while and we got moved to Slidell after the second week of school.

Thus began my odyssey through the years of my life totally immersed in the law.

 To Be Continued . . .

 It began as a fluke, really.

I’d had no lifelong dream to go to law school to become a lawyer.

In fact, when the bolt of lightening struck, I was 43, living in a beach house 16′ up on pilings among the huge oak trees in Long Beach, Mississippi (now totally obliterated since Katrina!) and working 20 miles east along the beach in Biloxi across from the harbor. 

 Tom worked in Picayune (40 miles northwest of Long Beach away from the coast) and Mark was a freshman in college at Mississippi State, some 6 hours north. 

We had a Hobie on the beach just across from the beach house and sailed a lot, as you can see below

 Life was good.  Certainly, going to law school was the last thing on my mind.

  But, you see – I was in the world’s most hated profession (read all about my hilarious escapades here – Part 1 and here – Part 2) and forced to hang out with a lot of "lawyers" and "attorneys."

I would come home every night and tell Tom that I was a lot smarter than a lot of them I dealt with.   Finally, I said to him one evening, "You know – I ought to go to law school, but I don’t know anything about it."

That changed a few days later when I was sitting in an attorney’s office in downtown Gulfport working a case.  We started talking and he said . . .

To Be Continued . . .