With flute in hand, Boston litigator set to take center stage.

Byline: Kris Olson

Bruce E. Falby is used to taking center stage in the courtroom.

The DLA Piper partner has represented clients in a wide range of business suits, including one that U.S. District Court Judge William G. Young called a "high stakes, winner-takes-all, quintessentially complex commercial case."

That case ended with Falby and his colleagues turning back a $14 million lender liability claim that a borrower had brought against their clients and obtaining a $17.5 million judgment on a counterclaim.

But when it comes to playing his flute, which Falby has done for the past quarter century with Newton's New Philharmonia Orchestra, he has been content to blend into the background as part of the ensemble.

That is about to change.

In performances on Nov. 23 and 24 at Newton's First Baptist Church, Falby will serve as the featured soloist on Mozart's Flute Concerto No. 1 as the orchestra opens its Classics Series.

Falby started playing the flute when he was 9. As a young man, playing professionally in a symphony orchestra was his Plan A, despite the long odds.

"It was like trying to become a trapeze artist in the circus there wasn't a lot of call for it," Falby says.

He landed at the Conservatory of Music at Baldwin Wallace University in Berea, Ohio, a small school perhaps best known for producing the tennis journalist Bud Collins.

Falby notes that young musicians of his day were often caught in a Catch-22 situation: To get jobs, they had to have experience, but there were limited opportunities to gain that experience in the United States. Many were forced to travel to foreign countries to build their resumes.

In Falby's case, a professor told him, "I have a job for you it's in Managua, Nicaragua."

As the country veered toward civil war, Falby wound up leaving Nicaragua abruptly. His employer promised to send along the money he had earned, but it never arrived.

After earning his bachelor's degree in music, Falby began going on auditions while doing whatever it took to pay the rent, including loading UPS trucks. He also took the LSAT exam.

"I thought if music didn't pan out, I would go to law school," he says.

In his law school applications, he wrote essays drawing parallels between being on stage and what he imagined performing in a courtroom might entail.

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