Sticky Lawyers Looks Back: Lives in Practice

[00:00:03] John Reed: Hey, everybody. This is the final compilation in our series, Sticky Lawyers Looks Back, where we've revisited past conversations to identify patterns and commonalities among our guests, the things that make them Sticky Lawyers. Because we're going back to some of our earliest episodes, the sound quality might be a little rough. I hope you'll enjoy it nevertheless,

Have you ever met someone and thought, Of course, they do that for a living. I'm talking about lawyers whose practices are inextricably linked to who they are.

Take the son of Polish World War II refugees who helped create post-communist banking and commercial law in his parents' homeland. A Special Olympics champion, coach, and special education lawyer whose mother calls him the autism whisperer. An orthopedic surgeon who became a personal injury lawyer. A geneticist cited by the Supreme Court, not for legal work, but for science.

These lawyers didn't choose their niches. They are their niches.

You're about to hear 11 lawyers whose practices don't just reflect who they are; they embody them. Let's dive in.

Our childhoods influence who we become. So, let's start there. For some lawyers, the seeds of their practices weren't planted in law school, college, or even high school. It happened much earlier in the moments we don't usually think of as career preparation. Maria Dwyer's story starts at age four. 

[00:01:40] Maria Dwyer: My family had a catering business that they started out of the basement of our home when I was about four years old. So, my first job was peeling carrots and potatoes in our basement at the age of four or five. So maybe that led me into employment law because of all the youth employment rules that are out there. And the exceptions when it's a family member. 

[00:02:04] John Reed: That was your immediate family. Right. How about other relatives? 

[00:02:09] Maria Dwyer: So, my grandparents immigrated from Italy with eight kids when, well, seven, one stayed in Italy. And when they arrived here in the Detroit area, my grandfather worked several jobs and on his off time built— from scratch, an empty lot—a restaurant on the east end of Dearborn that was wildly famous, for many years, and was passed down to his son when he was ready to retire. A lot of us were there on the weekends, enjoying the food and learning how to cook with my grandmother. 

My father taught me at an early age that there isn't any job that's unimportant, right? Because they always gave me the small tasks. And I learned that that really built up to the bigger tasks, right? So, peeling the potatoes. Setting the table. Greeting customers at the door. Because we started with the catering business and then moved into not just doing deliveries to homes, but becoming the main contractor for several banquet facilities, and then from there, when I was about 13 years old, we purchased a banquet facility where I worked every weekend until I graduated from high school and then went off to college. 

[00:03:29] John Reed: At what point did law school enter your mind? 

[00:03:32] Maria Dwyer: I think I always knew I wanted to go to law school. 

[00:03:36] John Reed: Really? What? Why? Why is that? 

[00:03:37] Maria Dwyer: Yeah. One of the jobs I had working for the family business was the host. So, I would be the person when you had a wedding who would do the speeches. From an early age, probably 16 years old, I was giving these speeches to crowds of 250, 300 people at weddings and other functions. And so, I learned to communicate in a crowd and enjoyed that, and thought I would enjoy being a litigator, which is probably half of what I do as an attorney. And that kind of started the path to law school for me. Those early jobs. 

[00:04:15] John Reed: At what point did employment law come into the picture? 

[00:04:19] Maria Dwyer: Probably my first year out of law school, I was working at a wonderful firm that had a lot of insurance defense cases, again, you know, primarily focused on litigation. But I wasn't passionate about the subject matter. My sister-in-law was working at a boutique labor and employment firm in Detroit and said that they were fantastic people and that I would probably really enjoy working with them. And I interviewed and then, uh, accepted the position and fell in love with employment law.

[00:04:51] John Reed: How did you start out with promoting yourself?

[00:04:54] Maria Dwyer: I think as a young lawyer, right out of law school, the first thing you need to do is learn how to practice law, understand the practice of law, and then learn the area that you're going to be practicing in. But once you get that nice baseline, at that point, I think you feel comfortable going out to the public and selling yourself, because that's what we do as attorneys. We have to sell ourselves. I felt like how can I do this and where do I feel most confident and comfortable, and what industries do I know the best?

And for me, it was easy to say it's the food industry. Because I grew up in the food industry and I understood the problems of companies in the food business.

[00:05:35] John Reed: Maria's practice grew from family tradition. For Rick Walawender, it's about heritage that spans continents from his parents' World War II refugee journey to his role in helping create post-communist Polish banking law and serving as Poland's honorary consul in Michigan.

[00:05:54] Rick Walawender: My parents were born in Poland, or what was Poland before the Second World War. We grew up belonging to a lot of Polish organizations and scouts and dance groups, and I developed an interest and a love for history and especially Polish history.

As I was in undergrad, I was a junior and in 1980 the Solidarity Trade Union started in Poland. My professors and mentors knew how interested I was, and so I worked out an arrangement to attend the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland. Frankly, it was partially for the academic experience, but really predominantly it was because I just wanted to be part of the action and what was going on. And I was, and I did get involved in strikes and marches for Solidarity and helped them out at their national headquarters in Gdansk and make a lot of friends.

When I became a lawyer, I actually became a public finance lawyer and did a lot of municipal law and bond financing. So, this guy calls me up representing this new Solidarity government and asks me if I would come to Poland to help them on some projects. One of the first projects I worked on was to set up a bank. I didn't know how to set a bank up. But what was more intriguing is that the Polish did have a banking code. It was basically gathering dust on the bookshelf for 45 years because no one had set up a private commercial bank.

So, you pull out the Polish banking code, and it's very short. But it had a section on how to set up a bank and what was required in an application. And there were just, I don’t know, five, six items. Even though that application technically could have been literally three or four pages to fulfill the requirements in the code, we made it look like a more normal bank application would look like here in the States. We submitted the application, and it was almost a little ceremony because this was the first time they saw anything like this. 

[00:08:10] John Reed: Sure. 

[00:08:11] Rick Walawender: So, I asked them what happens next? And they started giggling, and one of them said, “We're really not sure ourselves, but we'll let you know.” 

[00:08:18] John Reed: How did you become the honorary consul for Poland?

[00:08:22] Rick Walawender: It came through all this work that I was doing in Poland. Going back and forth, probably on a monthly basis, doing these transactions and representing clients, and so I became known to the Polish diplomatic corps. I was asked one day by the Consul General of Poland in Chicago. He had dinner with me and wanted to talk about what was going on, and then he offered me a position, and it was the position of an honorary consul in Detroit, which covers the entire state of Michigan.

[00:08:58] John Reed: Rick's heritage shaped his international practice. But Jasmine Moy's path was different. Not quite childhood, but those formative years, working every restaurant job imaginable, learning the hospitality world from the inside out.

[00:09:13] Jasmine Moy: It was hard because I was also working at least six days a week, and I was working at least 10 hours a day, but when I was working all those long hours, the one thing I was doing to make myself feel better was taking myself out to eat. And I was eating a lot, at like really sort of fancy, nice restaurants in New York City. And I have always loved restaurants. I worked in restaurants all through high school, all through college, all through law school. I had always waited tables and really loved the atmosphere and camaraderie that exist in a restaurant. 

I had started writing about food on a freelance basis just as a hobby. Because I just needed something to do with my time that actually made me feel good. And I thought this was like a fun thing to do, but I was meeting a lot of chefs and restaurateurs that way.

When you are spending obscene amounts of money at a restaurant and become something of a regular, the good places remember you. They're kind to you. They know you. I was eating out at restaurants so much that I was like trend spotting, you know, I was seeing new things show up on menus.

If you want to be a food writer, all you have to do is know what those things are. You write to the magazine, you write to an editor, and you say, Hey, I want to write an article about this because this is a new ingredient showing up on all of the menus. Then the minute you start writing, you can then just reach out to anybody and say, “Oh, I'm with Esquire Magazine. Oh, I'm with Timeout Magazine.” So, you're able to like to do that name-dropping, and then you're given access to people to do interviews and things like that. So, I was meeting exponentially more people in the food world once I started food writing. 

And then it was someone in the food world who didn't know I was a lawyer; they just thought I was a freelance writer. And when they found out I was like moonlighting as a writer, but actually a lawyer, as a paying job, it was somebody then who was like, you should really be a lawyer for, you know, restaurants. And I was like, is that a thing?

And I went home and started looking it up, and I found out that there was a very niche industry of attorneys. You know, I'm talking like three or four of them who were sort of well-known in the city for specializing in hospitality and serving restaurateurs. And so, I was like, Oh, I think this is probably what I should be doing. Like it just felt like a marriage of all of stuff that I had wanted out of my future basically.

I had not previously been able to wrap my mind around what kind of legal job I would think is fun and interesting. So, you know, it was sort of revelatory to me to say, Oh, this would be so neat to be doing this kind of work, which is less time sensitive. Less stressful just from a workflow perspective. Because I do only transactional work, so somebody emails me the contract, I review it whenever I feel like reviewing it within the bounds of, you know, reasonableness, and then I send it back.

So that kind of flexibility was really nice. Um, and then knowing chefs and being able to see a project from the nothing but the little, you know, smattering of an idea of something to then however many months later or years later, being able to go and sit down in a chair and eat the food that I've been hearing about. Being able to interact with my work and with those clients in that way was just magical. And it remains magical. It's still amazing to go and sit down in a restaurant that I helped work on, even if it was just a small bit of it. 

[00:12:23] John Reed: From childhood experiences to passion. Erin Jacobson always loved music, not as a musician, but as an appreciator who discovered she could protect the artists she admired.

[00:12:35] Erin Jacobson: I decided that I was going to be a lawyer when I was in college because I was actually going down a different path and decided to dip my toe into music because I've always enjoyed it as an appreciator, but I didn't know what there was to do in music. I thought the only way to work in music was being a musician, which I'm not. 

The university I was attending had a music industry program, so I took the introduction class that explained what do and what managers do, and what these things called copyrights are, and the agreements that musicians have to sign, and that there are lawyers that handle these copyrights and agreements for musicians, and that just opened a whole new world for me. I thought that was such a cool job, and I said I'm doing that.

I also just really took to the copyrights and the lessons on the contracts. It just really clicked with me. We started hearing all those stories about the artists getting screwed with these big, complicated contracts that they didn't understand. I just thought the job was so cool that I could do that and work with artists and protect them from getting screwed. I never looked back after that. That was it.

When I was still in college, once I had made that decision that I was going to be a music lawyer, I started immersing myself in the industry right away. I declared my minor as music industry. I took all the music industry courses that I could. I became a DJ at our campus radio station, and I had one of the top listened-to shows on the station and had independent bands in the studio with me every week for an interview and a live set.

And I did internships at Capitol Records and in radio and different things. So then, when it was time to go to law school, I chose a school that had an entertainment law program. I was in copyright as a first-year law student. I was a research assistant for my copyright professor. I interned at a music publishing company and their business affairs and legal department. And then I was also president of our Entertainment and Sports Law Society, where I organized panels of industry experts to speak to the students. I was also the student liaison to the ABA Forum on Entertainment and Sports Law and also the Beverly Hills Bar Association, and I met a lot of people. And then once I graduated and passed the bar, I opened my own practice.

When I first started, most of my clients were small, independent artists and advising them on probably smaller publishing deals, recording deals, maybe some licenses, maybe working with a producer or another songwriter or something like that. They were smaller, independent artists.

But then, as my practice has grown, so has the size and stature of my clientele. While I still do work with independent artists now, I have a lot of the Oscar-nominated, Grammy, Emmy, Golden Globe-winning artists and songwriters. I work with esteemed legacy catalogs. I work with heirs. I also represent some well-known independent music publishers.

I think that my clients really know that I protect them and their work, and that I always have their best interests at heart. I think they know I really care about them, that I help them get the best deal that they can get, and that I think of innovative solutions to help them achieve success. 

[00:16:29] John Reed: Music was always Erin's passion. But for Tamina Watson, the practice found her, following her from Bangladesh to the UK to a blind date in the United States, until she finally surrendered to becoming the immigration lawyer she never wanted to be.

[00:16:46] Tahmina Watson: The journey to the law started from when I could even remember. My father was a lawyer - immigration lawyer in the UK - in and in those days, immigration law was not the sexy thing to do. It was very much the community thing to do. And he was very good at it. There were a lot of ups and downs in our lives. We lived in different countries. But I was inspired by that. My mother's father was a lawyer. My mother's brother is a lawyer. My father's brother was a lawyer. There was a lot of lawyering in our family. So, that was inspiration, but it was also like a no-brainer. Of course, that's what I'm going to be doing. 

So that's what I had always aspired to do. And getting to be a barrister, which is a trial lawyer in the UK, was actually very, very hard. And eventually I became a barrister. I got my experience and just as I was qualifying, I come to the United States and I have a blind date with my husband, I suddenly had this open-mindedness that I could possibly live in the US. And so, it was three years long distance, and then I moved to the United States, went through the immigration process. Never expecting to be an immigration lawyer.

It was the one area of law I did not want to practice. But once I met my husband and moved here, went through the immigration process, when I finally got my green card and my bar license, all around the same time, immigration kept following me, saying, “Here's a job, here's a job.” I'm like, “No, thank you.” Almost like putting a cross up. “Like, no, thank you.” And then the fifth time, I said, you know, I'll, I just surrender. I'll just do this for five years, and then I'll go find the other thing I'm supposed to do. 

But it was day one when I started working in immigration, I thought, Gosh, this is everything I've been wanting to do without realizing immigration was the thing that would bring it.

I am a business immigration lawyer to businesses that are hiring, retaining talent, foreign talent. I also help people who are starting companies, so they might be expanding their businesses into the United States. They might be starting something brand new. 

I help a lot of religious institutions with religious education or practices, and I also help musicians and people who are coming here for entertainment purposes. I do a number of different types of visas, so I do all of the work visas. I do also help families and individuals, family-based immigration. I help people with naturalization. I do not go to court, but to make sure that my passion to help people is reflected in my work. I do a lot of pro bono organizing in our community. 

You hear a lot about policy, but you know, what is the practical impact of it? I don't think I necessarily understood that until I started practicing at my own firm, which I opened January 1, 2009. I. I live in Seattle, Washington, where there are these big companies that people know about, and they hire a lot of foreign talent, and they were being laid off. And when they were being laid off, the question that I got all the time from these people who wanted to start companies was, How do I get a visa to start my own company? 

And all of those discussions really led to understanding how I, as a lawyer, can affect policy. Suddenly, I had this moment where I thought, Wow, I could help create laws. Why am I not doing that? So that disconnect that I had between law and policy and how to create them as a practicing lawyer started to get bridged, and I became an advocate for policy change, which is how I started to write books and work with lawmakers and really look at how the law or policy that's being created affect the grassroots level.

[00:20:44] John Reed: Tamina's journey became her practice. But for Eric Weber, there was no journey to find. Being autistic isn't something that happened to him. It's who he is. And that's exactly what makes him what his mother calls the autism whisperer in his special education law practice.

[00:21:01] John Reed: You went to law school; you studied all that law school had to offer. What was the appeal of special education law?

[00:21:09] Erik Weber: I wanted to give people with disabilities, especially students, a chance to thrive, to find their own footing and to be able to excel as unique individuals and to become productive tax paying citizens. To be able to be the best that they can be, if they have the family members at the school districts, people around them in the circle supporting them as a cohesive unit.

[00:21:31] John Reed: Tell me some of your greatest hits, things that you're particularly proud of in terms of how you've helped your clients. 

[00:21:37] Erik Weber: Some of my proudest moments are getting some students into non-public schools so that they could get the more individualized attention that they needed in a smaller classroom settings. I have one who was doing, I believe, first-grade work in the fifth grade, and then he got into a non-public school, and he's in seventh grade, and he is already catching up grade levels. He's doing fourth-grade-level work right now.

[00:22:03- John Reed: Your work transcends public school or non-public or private school. You work in whatever school environment to help that family. 

[00:22:12] Erik Weber: Exactly. 

[00:22:13] John Reed: Describe for us your autism. I'm curious to know how you experience the world, if you'll indulge me and share that with me. 

[00:22:22] Erik Weber: Well, let's see. My autism, I'm highly detail oriented. I also have a very low tolerance for stupid drivers on the road. 

[00:22:33] John Reed: That's not autism. Sorry that that doesn't count. 

[00:22:36] Erik Weber: So, my mom has also joked with me that I'm the autism whisperer because I connect with others with disabilities really well, and as someone who has gone through the IP process. I believe it's my empathetic, sympathetic connection with students I work with and the athletes that I train that makes me a really solid attorney when it comes to special education law. Because they know how to gauge what it is each student needs and how to get the assessments they need and how to get the teachers and the parents on the same page with each other. 

They call it a spectrum for a reason. When you meet one person with autism, you've met one person with autism.

One of my coping mechanisms, well, I like to run, of course. That helps to clear out the brain farts in my head, and it's also great for my physical and mental health. It's really great for the mind, heart, and soul. But one of the other coping mechanisms that have gone to is memorizing and reciting comedic monologues from at least 14 different comedians. And I did a talent show during my first year of law school at Cal Western. And that was a great icebreaker for me, getting to connect with the other students there. Because when I first got in there, other students were wondering why I was getting accommodations such as time-and-a-half, use of a computer, and assigned my private testing room. But then, when they figured out that one, I'm funny. Two, I can memorize all this stuff. That was a big part. The memory stuff. Then they wanted me as a study buddy all of a sudden. 

[00:24:11] John Reed: Yep. No, I could see where you'd be very, very popular. Well, I mean, so much of learning law is just rote memorization.

[00:24:18] Erik Weber: And application too. 

[00:24:19] John Reed: That's true. I don't want to take anything away from that. You're absolutely right.

Let's talk about running.

[00:24:24] Erik Weber: Well, it's a passion, and it's a lifestyle. It's part of me. So, it started when I was nine years old after my father passed away. My mom put me into running so that I could find confidence for my life and find positive role models.

I've done the USA Masters Games track and field in 2017. And I've also done the World Games Unified Half Marathon, finished fourth out of everybody in that event. But one of my proudest accomplishments, really, on the running side of things has been as a coach, somebody who trains the athletes.

[00:24:59] John Reed: Okay. No longer be modest. What's your medal count? Just gimme a ballpark. 

[00:25:03] Erik Weber: At least 120 gold. 

[00:25:05] John Reed: Oh my gosh. One thing you mentioned earlier was after your dad's passing. That was an event that you had to deal with, and you turned it into a book. Tell us about that. 

[00:25:15] Erik Weber: Autism for Dads, the Importance of a Father's Love. So, when I wrote the book, at the time, between 50 to 80% of fathers were leaving the household after the autism diagnosis because they perceived it as the loss of the perfect child. And my book is about encouraging fathers to stay invested in the kids and stay connected with them, and to come down to their level of play as kids and be the heroes for the children. 

[00:25:46] John Reed: Eric's autism is inseparable from his practice. And for Sambul Ali-Karamali, her Muslim faith and identity aren't just personal; they're why she wrote three books explaining what most Americans don't know about Shariah law.

[00:26:01] Sumbul Ali-Kalamari: Growing up, I was pretty much the only Muslim that people around me had met. And so, I got all the questions. And when I went to college, it was even more intense because we were all living in the dorms.

This was at Stanford, and I was in the dorm, and everybody knew what everybody did. And all of a sudden, I was thinking, How am I going to pray five times a day without my roommate noticing? How am I going to figure out if there's pork in the dorm food when nobody knows what's in the dorm food? So, all those things came up, and then I went to law school, and I started practicing corporate law, and that's when I started getting questions about books like, Can you recommend any books on Islam? And there was nothing at the time. This was the 1990s; there was nothing that was readable.

I thought, Well, I'll write a book. And so, when my husband's job took us to London, I did an LL.M. in Islamic Law from the University of London School of Oriental and African Studies, which was one of the few places in the West that you could get an LL.M. in Islamic Law. And then I thought, “Okay, then I'll come back and start writing books.” And so that's how I ended up where I am. It's funny because, you know, my fear of public speaking used to be greater than my fear of death, and yet here I am. I'm talking about a topic that shouldn't be controversial, but which is like a magnet for a lot of negative viewpoints and rhetoric.

[00:27:23] John Reed: What are the most likely areas that a Muslim in the modern age, let's say in the United States, let's keep it local, would go to a legal scholar to adjudicate or advise on?

[00:27:38] Sumbul Ali-Kalamari: 90% of the Shariah, 90% of it is about personal devotion. It's about how you pray, how you fast. When you give charity, who to give charity to, how much. It's private law. Only about 10% is public law, which is transactions and offenses and torts, if you will. Only about 1% to 2% is what we might call criminal law. Most of Shariah is not stuff that was ever enforced, because it's personal devotional rules and guidelines. So, as a Muslim here, it's really those issues that come up.

The word Shariah has no fixed meaning, and I think that has caused a lot of the misunderstandings and problems. So, you know, when I was growing up Muslim, I never learned this word Shariah. Most Muslims I knew didn't learn this word Shariah. 

So, the way I frame it often is to say most of the Shariah is about fairness and justice, and if you enter into a transaction that satisfies American law and public policy, if it also satisfies Shariah, that's fine. Right? We don't care. All we care about is that it satisfies American law. As long as the contract, as long as what I'm trying to enforce is not somehow violating a policy, then yes, absolutely can be enforced just like any other contract.

We can put in any contract what the governing law is going to be. And so, if two Americans enter into a contract and they say this contract is going to be governed by German law, then the court will have to interpret German law to enforce that contract, or not—the same with any religious law. If two Jewish people go to a Jewish tribunal and have a decision made and then one tries to enforce it, the court will have to look at Jewish law to interpret that transaction, to see who was right, who was wrong. And it's no different with Shariah.

If two people go to a Shariah Council and the Shariah Council issues a ruling, and one of them doesn't comply, and the other one takes them to court, then the judge would look at what Shariah says and decide which of those people is correct and how the contract or whatever it is should be enforced. 

The key thing here is that if folks tend to say, Oh, see, there's Shariah in our courts. Shariah is taking over the United States. Well, no, there's no Shariah that's being forced on anybody. These are people who willingly submit to Shariah arbitration, and then they're just going to get their transaction or contract or whatever it is enforced.

[00:30:09] John Reed: Sumbul's faith drives her educational mission. Scott Schoettes experiences a different reality. He's HIV positive. And when you're fighting discrimination against people living with HIV, that's not just advocacy. That's personal.

[00:30:25] John Reed: Let me ask you, tell us about your HIV status. What's your condition, and how are you feeling?

[00:30:29] Scott Schoettes: Oh, you know, I feel great. It's something I hardly even think about anymore, really. The HIV medications today are pretty dialed in, and you have very few side effects from taking the medications. And basically, if you take the medication every day, your body's normal. Its immune system is functioning normally.

I don't think about it much, except you have to have access to your medication. And that's an important thing. I'm lucky enough that I have good health insurance and always have that access to HIV medications. But it's something that affects many people, because they don't have that ready access to medications.

[00:31:08] John Reed: Well, and that's an important part of your work, and I'm glad to hear about that for you.

I mentioned this work that you do on behalf of US military members that are facing HIV discrimination and denial of benefits. Tell us about how that work developed. 

[00:31:24] Scott Schoettes: When I first came to Lambda, I was put on a case. It was my very first case. It was already going. And it was on behalf of a gentleman who wanted to be a foreign service officer, and he was denied the opportunity to even attend training, the school, because he was living with HIV.

And at that time, the reason given was that you have to be able to send a foreign service officer anywhere, across the globe. And in some places, you could have ready access to good HIV treatment, but in other places, it would be more difficult.

And so, they claimed because this person would not be worldwide-deployable as a foreign service officer that they could legally deny him this job. We won that case, although it was in a settlement, so there wasn't any decisional law that we made. But we did get the State Department to start taking people living with HIV as foreign service officers. And then that kind of branched out and had an effect on Peace Corps employees as well.

But at that time, I knew when that case was happening that the next big one that we need to tackle would be on behalf of service members. In a very similar situation, they need to be able to deploy worldwide.

And they had the additional thing of the fact that their job actually presents a risk of being injured, bleeding, et cetera, that foreign service workers don't worry about that so much. At that time, it wasn't a case we could have brought and won. But as the years rolled on and HIV moved forward, and now what we know is that if someone is on the meds and has an undetectable viral load, that it's been proven that they can't transmit the disease sexually. It's really well established now, and the CDC has come out and endorsed it, et cetera.

So when that was happening, that's when I thought, Ah, maybe we can take on the military over this idea, which was never really founded in science that someone with HIV serving in the military, if they got injured on the battlefield, that they were going to, you know, transmit HIV to other service members who might also be bleeding. It was a theoretical possibility that that could happen. It kind of makes sense as a theory, but there had never been a documented case of that happening anywhere or in similar situations. 

What we learned as we brought this case on behalf of someone who had served in the military for years, had done two tours of duty in the Middle East, had come under live fire, had an Army commendation medal, and went to law school on the military's dime. He tested positive after he came back from a tour of duty. And when he applied to be an advocate general officer, a JAG Corps member, he was denied. Because the military, not only will they not take people living with HIV, but if you get HIV once you're in, they don't throw you out or they didn't, but they wouldn't promote you. They wouldn't move you from being an enlisted person to being an officer. 

So that's what we ended up suing on behalf of that gentleman, as well as a couple of cadets who had gone through the whole training academy for both the Air Force and the Navy, one in each. And at the end of their four years, when they were ready to become officers, it was discovered that they had HIV. And so, then they were denied their commissions, which is really what you're working to achieve all through the four years of military school.

We won. We got the court to issue a permanent injunction against the Department of Defense that said that they had to allow service members, people who were in the military already, living with HIV, if they had an undetectable viral load, and were otherwise stable, had to allow them to deploy and they had to allow them to commission as officers.

[00:35:22] John Reed: Scott's identity is his advocacy. Now we turn to John Naranja —Dr. John—an orthopedic surgeon who left the active practice of medicine for law school. And here's the thing: while bringing all that medical knowledge to personal injury claims, he avoids directly handling plaintiffs' medical malpractice cases to maintain relationships with former colleagues.

[00:35:46] John Reed: When and how did you make the decision to become a doctor? 

[00:35:49] John Naranja: Growing up in the household with the two physicians, it was easy to identify with that career field. I was able to see the gratification that my parents had in terms of helping take care of patients. I saw the medical books that they saw, and for some curious reason, I wanted to look through them and learn, learn what was in them. I was living in an environment that helped me develop that career path or that career mindset.

So, I ended up going into orthopedic surgery, and as much as my dad really wanted me to go into psychiatry, I did my best to try and like it, but I went into orthopedic surgery because of the immediate gratification that you can get when you treat patients.

When something breaks their bone, and you put it back together again, they're going to get better from that. The mental health side is, as gratifying as that can be, sometimes you're not going to see that kind of immediate result with treatment. I was the type of person that I liked those immediate results. I like to use my hands in terms of the surgery, and that was something that was attractive to me. 

One of the other things that I did during my orthopedic practice was I was also involved in doing some medical legal matters. I served as an expert in different types of cases. I also did what are called independent medical examinations, which are also on the legal side of things, and I actually enjoyed doing those things. I was getting a flavor of the legal world in my medical practice, and I also developed a lot of relationships with other attorneys during this time. When I started getting a little bit disillusioned with the practice of medicine, that's when the wheels start rolling and say, “If this isn't really what I want to do anymore, what would be the next step?”

I was trying to figure out, okay, I still want to help people. I still want to use the things that, that I learned from all the medical school training and the residency, and how could I do that in a way where I'm still getting some personal satisfaction and increasing my personal development and after weighing a number of different options, I could have gone back to the Air Force, but it wouldn't have felt the same, I think. And so, I decided to explore the idea of getting a law degree.

[00:37:50] John Reed: What takeaways from your career path, your series of career paths, are you imparting to your kids? What are the learning lessons that you're bestowing upon them?

[00:38:01] John Naranja: First of all, I do want to acknowledge that I'm a man of faith. I think there's a calling that's bigger than us, and I try to follow that. Secondly, I think that sometimes when life is throwing you different storms or different challenges, you accept those challenges and try and move on. You have the ability, and you have the resources. You just have to look for them in order to overcome those challenges. I'm hoping that's the kind of model I want my kids to see in me, in terms of everything doesn't go positively all the time. So, you have to be able to understand that first, you have your faith. Secondly, you have gifts that you've been given that you can try and use to overcome any challenges that you have. Those are the biggest things that I want to try and impart to my children and whoever I meet. I want to have those kinds of conversations where maybe people can be inspired to do more than to have a calling more than just themselves. That's important to me. 

[00:38:59] John Reed: You are a practicing attorney, you're a trial lawyer, you are handling cases, but at the same time, you've developed a brand called Dr. John. And part of that brand, probably less known to clients, but maybe more known within the firm and maybe to other attorneys around town, you are a medical-legal consultant. Is that a fair representation of where your practice is today? 

[00:39:25] John Naranja: Yeah, I think the practice has evolved into one in which we're going to use the skills that I have and that I've learned, both from the medical and legal, my legal education and training, and experience. We're going to use that to, to advocate for our clients in the best we can.

And if that means helping other attorneys or even other experts to best present the case, then that's the role I've accepted. I think that if you look at the results that we're getting with me in that role, we're very happy with how that's working. And I'm very happy because I can still maintain my relationships with my colleagues, both on the legal and medical side, and still feel like I'm making a difference.

[00:40:09] John Reed: From medicine to science. Jennifer Wagner was a geneticist before she was a lawyer. And when the Supreme Court cited her work, it wasn't for her legal scholarship; it was for her genetics research.

[00:40:22] John Reed: You were, not surprisingly, the valedictorian of your high school class and now work and teach and advocate really at the intersection of law and science. What was your path from AP high school student to multi-degreed professor and legal authority?

[00:40:40] Jen Wagner: I actually started out knowing I was going to go to law school. I think since fourth grade, I figured I would be an attorney at some point. When I got to college, I realized that the benefit of knowing you wanted to go to law school is that it really didn't matter what you studied as an undergrad. You could do literally anything that interested you and excited you. And I happened to be taking an anthropology class as a gen ed requirement. And I fell in love with it. I couldn't believe that people studied this and had this as a profession, just studying people. And I really tried to dive into all of the aspects of anthropology. 

And the benefit is that I was at Penn State for undergrad, and they have the top anthropology program. And so, I was able to have experiences like an archeological field school, osteology, paleo pathology studies abroad, and also found a genetics lab that I participated in as an undergraduate research assistant. 

As I was in that research area, I really came to be passionate about this intersection of science and law. And then decided, Well, you know what? It's not enough to get the JD. I'm going to need the Ph.D. also. And so, I actually ended up starting the PhD program first. I went to the University of Michigan. And the timing of when I was there just left me unsettled, thinking about how the legal profession didn't have enough awareness of some of the science.

And I decided to leave early and go to law school. I thought that I shouldn't spend any more time focusing on the science. I had enough that would give me the tools that I needed for the legal profession. And so, I left and went to University of North Carolina for law school but still was trying to stay up with the science. I actually hung out with PhD students who were getting their degrees in all sorts of scientific disciplines, and studied international human rights law in the summer of my second year of law school. And it just so happened that one of my professors from undergrad was on sabbatical at Trinity College, Dublin, and I had the opportunity to sit in on some genetics meetings. And this time, I was really feeling like the scientific discipline needed to have a better understanding of the legal framework, the social context in which they were conducting the research. To design better studies, to anticipate the implications of the findings of whatever research they were conducting.

And I realized that getting the JD was not going to be enough. So, it's like I had that epiphany once more, and ended up getting my PhD after the JD. So that's how I ended up with the degrees. And then since that time, I've really stayed at this intersection of science, law, and policy.

[00:43:26] John Reed: You have an exceptional role in that you can do the research, that you can then analyze, that you can then apply to the policy. It's one-stop shopping for important legal issues as opposed to only living in one of those particular phases. Am I characterizing that right?

[00:43:52] Jen Wagner: That's one of the reasons why I enjoy it. I’m a bit of a workaholic. I admit that. But what's nice is that on any given project, I might be wearing different hats. And so, I find that to be quite enjoyable.

[00:44:05] John Reed: And when we get to that end stage, that idea of impacting policy and having it become practical, you have an impact. If I'm not mistaken, you've been cited by the US Supreme Court.

[00:44:17] Jen Wagner: I have. I say I peaked early, right? That it happened at, I think it was 33, when that happened. I was very excited. And one of the things that's so gratifying about that is the Supreme Court cited me for my genetics, my scientific work. Someday, maybe they'll cite me for my legal interpretations.

[00:44:35] John Reed: Treat it as a twofer. I would just run with it. 

[00:44:39] Jen Wagner: I like that.

[00:44:40] John Reed: Talk to us about the other ways that your work is having a very real impact on policy, on real-world applications.

[00:44:49] Jen Wagner: I always want it to have more impact, but I'll take modest impact wherever I can find it, right? So, prior to joining Penn State's faculty, I was at Geisinger Health System in their Center for Translational Bioethics and Healthcare Policy. And while I was there, I very much was conducting research that would help inform healthcare policy related to research data, related to informed consent. So, I helped with shaping the All of Us research program and worked with some wonderful colleagues on the informed consent process there to ensure that research participants, regardless of whether they're participating from Pennsylvania or California or Florida or wherever, would have an equitable research experience. And that's quite tricky when you recognize the different state laws that might apply even in the healthcare space, where we tend to have a more uniform approach with the federal laws that are there. So that's one example, I guess. 

And then through my teaching, I try to help future scientists, future engineers, know how to engage with policy makers, and I try to teach law students how to be more influential with the scientists and technologists and engineers that they might interact with, either as clients or in the courtroom.

[00:46:07] John Reed: Do you spend your day running from one academic building to another, or do your students do that? Are your classes multidisciplinary, or are your courses specific to the colleges in which you teach?

[00:46:20] Jen Wagner: I pride myself in not siloing the expertise that I have. Actually, all of the classes that I have taught at Penn State have been multidisciplinary. So, in the same classroom, I have anthropology PhD students. I have computer scientists, upper-level undergraduate students. I have law students who want to go from everywhere from healthcare sector to patent firms and the like. I have LLM students who are coming internationally, nursing students. I have students from all different backgrounds, from a disciplinary perspective and from a geographic perspective, at least if they're at Penn State. 

And it makes it challenging for me from the standpoint of I don't have prerequisites in my classes. I try to use that first week or two weeks to onboard everyone and say, Okay, what is the US governmental system? What does our legal system look like? And not assuming that they know there are three branches of government and what federal preemption might be. You have to set that foundation if you're going to have these nuanced conversations about governance and oversight and who's in a protected class or not.

[00:47:34] John Reed: Jennifer brought science to law. Then there's Robert Gracie. Bob brought his experience litigating before the bench and then serving on the bench. He's a former Pennsylvania Superior Court judge who became Chief Counsel to the Judicial Conduct Board, investigating the very judges he once sat beside.

[00:47:54] Robert Graci: I had an opportunity after my first year in law school, I saw a want ad on the bulletin board that the state's attorney's office for Miami-Dade County, Florida, was hiring interns. And I applied, and I was fortunate to get that opportunity. I got a credit for every semester that I worked, but I also got invaluable trial experience. I actually tried my first jury trial while I was still a law student. You were allowed to practice as long as you had a certified lawyer at your side. And I did that.

I'll never forget my first trial. It was very, very serious offense, an aggravated assault. The defendant had stabbed the victim literally within an inch of his heart. I worked it up, and I'll never forget the supervision that I got after I conducted my direct examination of the police officer witness. Before I turned the witness over for cross, I leaned over to my boss and said, "Do you have any questions you want to ask?" And he leaned back at me and said, "It's your case." And that was the end of the supervision. And fortunately, I won. And it was from that experience as an intern that I came to love the courtroom. I knew I wanted to do something in litigation.

[00:49:14] John Reed: Tell us about your time on the bench. What did you enjoy about it? What was the surprise for you or the surprises?

[00:49:21] Robert Graci: I enjoyed everything about it. My work on the Superior Court was probably the most rewarding of all the things. And I've had a wonderful career with a lot of opportunities, a lot of interesting cases, a lot of things that I never thought I'd be involved in, including the opportunity to argue a case in the United States Supreme Court. But the work on the Superior Court, it was to me, it was pure law.

[00:49:46] John Reed: What's interesting is everything you had done until the time you stepped off the bench provided the skills and the background to then go to the Judicial Conduct Board. So, talk about that.

[00:49:58] Robert Graci: I had left the bench in the beginning of 2004. I had a very nice job with a prominent Pennsylvania firm. And quite frankly, that's where I thought I would retire from. I was enjoying the work. I liked the people I worked with. But I literally bumped into somebody who had an interest in the judicial conduct board. He said, ‘I've been meaning to give you a call. The fellow who's the chief counsel of the Judicial Conduct Board has announced he's retiring.’ I wanted to give you a call to see if you might know somebody who's... and he stopped just like that. And he kind of tilted his head, you know, the way a dog looks at you if you do something goofy. Well, he kind of looked at me, he said. " Would you be interested in being Chief Counsel of the Judicial Conduct Board?"

Quite honestly, what fascinated me about the position, the chief counsel is specifically mentioned in the constitution, and I think that the original board members thought, “Well, that should be the head of the agency.” As much as I liked the legal aspect of it and wanted to keep my hands in the legal aspect of it,  the idea of running a small agency of the Commonwealth government fascinated me. Again, it brought me back into public service, and that really has been a career-long love of mine.

I had a great staff, and we were doing important work. But it was never perceived, or it has never been perceived, and the board certainly was never of the view that it was the function of the board to skewer judges. When a judge runs afoul of the law or of the rules governing conduct of judges, you want to restore confidence amongst the populace that the system is a good system. The system works. There are problems to be sure, but the primary reason for discipline is not necessarily to punish the judge. That's one of the reasons.

But it's also to restore that confidence, and to give people the belief, the legitimate belief. And I do firmly believe that it is a legitimate belief that we have a good judiciary. It's populated by men and women who live and breathe the same as the rest of us. And they're subject to the foibles that we're all subject to. And they know that they're not judges just when they have their robes on and just when they're sitting on the bench. They're judges 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. And sometimes they make mistakes.

[00:52:10] John Reed: Eleven lawyers, 11 different paths. One truth. The most authentic practices can't be separated from who we are. These aren't marketing angles or niche strategies. It's much deeper than that.

What can we learn here? If you're searching for that thing that makes you sticky, maybe it's already staring you in the face. Maybe it's something you've been carrying your whole life, waiting for you to recognize and say, This is what I do because this is who I am.

If this is your first time listening to the podcast, thanks for tuning in, and I hope you'll come back. If you're a long-time listener, I appreciate you, and stay tuned for new episodes coming soon.

Until next time, I'm John Reed, and you've been listening to Sticky Lawyers.