Advice From the Bench

There was a judge from Alabama in my mediation training class, and he was every inch the kindly southern gentleman. We had an impromptu happy hour to celebrate completing the program, and he asked all of us about what we wanted to do with the law. Interestingly, he advised us to stay out of criminal law, warning us that we wouldn't find it intellectually challenging enough. You'll get bored after a year, he warned, because the cases rely so heavily on statute and are all more or less the same. Civil law would always be more varied, because, "There's no end to the kinds of trouble people can get themselves into."