My path to law. Backing Into the Law

• Author: Ed Marquette
• Pages: 14-15

PHOTO COURTESY OF ED MARQUETTE

Opening Statements

Backing Into the Law

By Ed Marquette

#MyPathToLaw is a guest column that c elebrates the diversity of the

legal profession thro ugh attorneys’ fi rst-person stories deta iling their

unique and inspir ing trajectories. Read mo re #mypathtolaw stories on

Twi tt er .

If I’m honest, I backed into the

law more than anythi ng else. In this

I suspect I am not alone, though I

think few would admit it .

My journey starte d on a farm in

northeast Missour i. Very early, I

knew that farmi ng was not in my

future, havi ng developed an allerg y

to dirt, g rease and sweat. My father

wanted me to be a doctor. That, of

course, ensured that I wou ld become

anything but a doctor.

At a small, rura l high school, one

gets to do every thing: baseball, foot-

ball, track, golf , band, basketball,

4-H, student c ouncil, honor society,

Young Engineers and Scientists, and

even Future Farmers of Americ a.

Probably because it was st range

and unusual for a farm boy to h ave

a passion for nuclear physics, that

is exactly what I ha d. Although I do

not remember now, in high school I

could have told you the oscillation

properties of a muon neutrino.

All of that, however, slammed

to a sudden halt when an acciden-

tal blast from a fellow qua il hunter’s

gun knocked me fl at. The spray from

the shotgun’s muzzle sent lead pel-

lets through my eyes, rendering me

blind.

This all happened during t he tur-

moil of the Vietnam confl ict. While

recuperating from the ac cident, I

became caught up in the w inds of

change and the politics of the era . I

started ma king campaign speeches

on behalf of then-Missouri At torney

General Thomas Eaglet on, a charis-

matic dovish Democrat, at ic e cream

socials, county f airs and public gath-

erings of all kind s. The adrenaline

rush one gets from ca mpaigning

generally—and specifi cally from

engaging in public debate—is hard

to explain, and it is a ddictive. It

seemed that politics was defi nitely

in my future.

“What happened to nuclear

physics?” you might ask. Braille,

it turns out, is not well-suit ed to

complex mathematics. The Braille

symbol for the letter “a” is also

used for the number “1”; the sym-

bol for “b” matches the “2” symbol;

and the same is true for the other

integers. It takes additiona l sym-

bols to di erentiate between let-

ters and numbers. Imagi ne even a

relatively simple algebraic expre s-

sion written in Brai lle. A career in

physics, ther efore, was doomed.

Politics became my passion. I was

elected the president of the Young

Democrats and chaire d a statewide

youth committee for the Democrat ic

Party. I was active i n the movement

to lower the voting age to 18.

The default profession, it seemed,

for all politicians wa s the same:

the law. Therefore, I applied to an

array of law schools and in that way

backed into the law.

It is impossible now to re-create

the electric atmosphere of 1973, the

year I start ed at Harvard. The

Senate Watergate Committee hear-

ings were being televised d aily. The

vice president of the United States,

Spiro Agnew, resigned, mak ing nolo

contendere a highly relevant topic of

discussion in our cri minal law class.

After the Sat urday Night Massacre,

Elliot Richards on spoke on campus

about why he resigned rather than

fi re special prosecutor Archiba ld

Cox at the behest of the embattled

President Richard Nixon. Then, of

course, the president of the Unit-

ed States resigned , and his hand-

picked succes sor pardoned him.

Perhaps it was overload. Whatever

it was, I was burned out on politic s.

But ironically, I had not burned out

on the law.

Looking back, I wa s extremely for-

tunate but too oblivious to r ealize

it. When intervie wing for associate

positions, I was usual ly asked, “How

can you practice law being blind?” I

think most who asked th at question

didn’t have a clue. At the time, how-

ever, I thought they were just ask-

ing for my strategy. One interv iewer,

however, did not ask. So, I asked

him why he didn’t ask. He said, “If

you can make the kind of g rades

that you have made at the Harva rd

Law School, then you can fi gure out

how to practice law in our law fi rm.”

I accepted the job o er from that

fi rm, and that is how I ended up in

Ka nsa s Cit y.

Just as I backed into the law

through pursuit of politics, I ba cked

into intellectua l property and tech-

nology through my blindness. Using

voice synthesis, I taught mysel f com-

puter programming, and I e ven

wrote a couple of commercially d is-

tributed educational computer pro-

grams. Then, the early, primit ive

screen-reading progra ms required

a deep knowledge of computer

14 || ABA JOURNAL JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2019

MY PATH TO LAW

“When an individual has to devise

alternative solutions to accomplish

even the most mundane tasks, that

person is, of necessity, adept at

fi nding alternative solutions.”

—Ed Marquette