Pacific Ocean Practice.

• Author: Bradley, John

At some point, we all daydream about a perfect way to combine our law degree with travel to faraway places. You might be just out of law school, thinking you have earned a distraction from staring at pages and pages of very thick textbooks. You might be in the middle of a career, wondering if there is any way to substitute blue skies for the three walls and fluorescent light of a cubicle. Or, you might be closing in on early retirement, thinking you should finally pick a life based on location rather than salary.

Most of us repeatedly squash that dream to meet the demands of a professional career and family; or, we temporarily satisfy the urge with a quick flight to a place that isn't so far away, has a great hotel and perhaps a partial view of a beach. For those of you who can't seem to make those daydreams go away, I want to explain how some prosecutors get to that faraway place by using their law degree, lowered expectations and a dive into a Pacific Ocean practice.

The Pacific Ocean is the world's biggest and deepest body of water. The surface of the Pacific covers more space than all the land masses in the world combined. More importantly, the Pacific includes over 25,000 islands, which are divided into three culturally distinct areas: Micronesia, Melanesia and Polynesia. Turns out some of these places need American prosecutors.

In 2012, after practicing criminal law for over 25 years, largely as a prosecutor, I found myself facing retirement through the collective will of the county voters. I went from an elected District Attorney with a lifetime of experience to a worn-out Texas lawyer. My government practice was filled with decades of crime stories, legislative victories and defeats, professional friendships and enemies, trial memories and emotional relationships with a long list of victims of crime. I thought that was enough to prepare me for retirement.

During World War II, American soldiers learned about the Pacific islands the hard way by attacking Japanese airfields and naval ports. Those soldiers, many of them hardened Marines, discovered a new type of battlefield filled with hidden caves, overwhelming heat, constant thirst and an enemy who did not surrender. Most of us have only seen or heard about these places through movies or documentaries about those battles.

Gradually, after lots of naps, reading, and time with friends and tennis, my curiosity in criminal law resumed. There just isn't any other job where you will hear and be able to tell so many interesting stories. And, by that time, I had resumed traveling and remembered just how much I liked islands and oceans. I also needed some new stories. That renewed energy and restlessness led me to the Internet and that modern miracle for the curious: Google Search.

My search started with the words "prosecutor Pacific island". Those early searches pulled up jobs in Hawaii. I knew something of the prosecutor market there from teaching several years at an annual seminar on the island of Oahu. I had even once had lunch with the District Attorney on Maui, asking about practicing in Hawaii. The biggest barrier was the need for a law license recognized by the local bar in Hawaii. Without reciprocity, that would require studying for and passing a new bar exam. And that wasn't anything I was embracing yet. Then I...