Page 22 - Priorities #49 2011-April/May

22
Q&A
An Inteview with
Larry David ‘62 After retiring from a successful business career, why not become a lawyer?
After 28-years in busi- ness, Larry David decided to reinvent himself and pursue his lifelong dream to become a lawyer. Larry sat down and told us how he went from the Priory, to his M.B.A., to his J.D.
Larry David as a Priory student
Interview by Sean Mclain Brown, Director of Communications at the Priory
SMB: What do you enjoy most about your practice in family law?
LD: My law practice consists of family law (concentrating on cases where children are involved and domestic violence has been a component of the parental relationship), corporate, contracts, and general real estate not having to do with development. What I enjoy about practicing law is the variety you experience and the constant thinking that is required as you go through your daily routines.
SMB: Law is a second career for you, going back to school later in life must have presented some challenges, can you speak to this?
LD: Attending law school was the single most difficult education- al challenge I have ever undertaken. I think the thing that made it so difficult is that a mind between the ages of 56 and 60 (the years I attended law school) is not anywhere near as supple as the mind of a person attending school in their early twenties (the age at which I attended business school and received my MBA, Finance).
SMB: How did you become interested in law?
LD: I have always been interested in law. However, beginning my business career directly out of business school, I never had the chance to pursue law except as a “practicing” client. When I retired from business in 1995, and then read about a cost effec- tive online law school, Concord Law School, in 1999, I was able to pursue my long held dream.
SMB: What is the most challenging aspect of your work?
LD: The most challenging aspect of the work is keeping up with the deadlines. Litigation is a young person’s game and, in family law, by nature there is litigation. So, as one of the older “new” practitioner’s in the area, I find litigation a challenge that in my younger years I think I could have handled with much less con- sternation than I do now.
SMB: You’ve spent more than six years as an attorney volunteer with the LACBA Domestic Violence Project. How did you get involved with them and what do you enjoy most about your volunteer work?
LD: When you are a 61-year old first-year attorney, the clients are not breaking your door down. I sent inquiries to a number of legal services agencies offering my talents at no cost. Only two of them responded, and one of them was LACBA’s DVP. After I had been volunteering there for a while, my first trial case developed, and
I embarked on a yearlong struggle to remove a convicted child molester from a four-year old female child’s life. This effort was successful, and I have kept up my relationship with DVP to this day. The people I work with at DVP and the people I am able to help provide a periodic exhilaration that I find uplifiting.