The Many Hats of CBA YLD Chair Spencer Rubin, 0920 COBJ, Vol. 49, No. 8 Pg. 68

AuthorBY HALEY HEMEN
PositionVol. 49, 8 [Page 68]

49 Colo.Law. 68

The Many Hats of CBA YLD Chair Spencer Rubin

Vol. 49, No. 8 [Page 68]

Colorado Lawyer

September, 2020

August, 2020

BY HALEY HEMEN

Spencer Rubin has the laid-back Denver vibe down. An avid hiker, he recounts the time he was tackling a 14er when a favorite hat was taken by the wind, right off his head. “I was determined to get it, so I did. Had to scramble down a scree field,” he says. To the uninitiated, a 14er is a mountain peak 14,000 feet or higher—you know, high enough that altitude sickness becomes an issue. And a scree field? That is a not-altogether stable slope of loose, broken rock piled at the base of a cliff. When he says that his most exciting 14er moment of last summer was whether he would have enough breath to make it to the top, one gets a sense that, to the guy who takes on scree fields for fun, this might be understatement.

Shaking Things Up

In addition to hiking, Spencer enjoys nature photography, spending time with his “doggo” Yahtzee, and astrophotography, or the capture of celestial bodies or events in the night sky. As exciting as Spencer’s hikes can get, this hobby sees him in a more grounded, focused mode. To make his images, he will take a drive to the closest yet darkest spot where it is still possible to make it home around midnight. Then he sets up his equipment and settles in. “There are lots of different types of astrophotography depending on what kind of celestial body you are trying to capture—and the farther away it is, or the smaller, the more technical equipment you need, which can get costly.” For his kind of photography, Spencer takes wide-angle images of the night sky on nights without moon interferences to get images of the milky way. “Making the images is a time investment and post-production is technical. I have to watch a 45-minute video on photo editing in Photoshop so I can remember all the steps. The final product is arguably art.”

The two sides, the daring hiker and the thoughtful photographer, should make for an exciting year ahead as Spencer takes over as chair of the CBA Young Lawyers Division. It’s a role he was encouraged to pursue by Joi Kush, CBA president-elect, and Danaé Woody, outgoing chair of the CBA YLD. “They were the individuals who recognized that I might have leadership potential and worked tirelessly to get me further involved in leadership roles. I think I knew that I was capable of shaking things up for the better at the CBA when we sold out in three days for our inaugural rafting event. We’ve done it three times now—it was supposed to be four this summer, but COVID.”

Career Trajectory

Like many lawyers, Spencer had his sights set on the legal profession as a kid. At age 11 or 12, “I made a pact with my best friend that we’d both become lawyers.” And they did just that. His friend went into bankruptcy law and practices in New York City, while Spencer has taken on technology and intellectual property transactions in Denver.

“I got sidetracked along the way, thinking I might make a career out of acting. I loved doing it, but at the end of the day, I wanted to make a decent living. I thought that I could be an entertainment lawyer or work in an adjacent area of law. It was hard to make a...

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