Sean Carter was a lawyer. He studied at Harvard with Barack Obama and comfortably worked as in-house counsel for a California mortgage company. Then he realized he was bored and deciding to unexpectedly change jobs, he pursued his other passion: comedy.
“Every month I’d take the same eight mortgage agreements and change the names and dates. It was not exactly the hardest job in the world. It was not heavy lifting. I was just bored,” he said. “It wasn’t horrible. How could you hate it? I worked indoors. I could do it asleep. Most of the time I did.”
Now working as a full-time legal humorist, he finds his job to finally have some meaning. He travels the country giving talks on subjects ranging from legal ethics to stress management. The difference between what he does and what a comedian does, as he sees it, is that he says “important things in a funny way.” Ultimately, he hopes that his lectures at corporate gatherings and organization meetings will inspire others to quit their careers and go after their dreams.
December 12th, 2007
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Tania Shah is one of a growing number of individuals hired by law firms to handle unified efforts at diversity and inclusion, environmental sustainability, pro bono work and charitable giving, among other initiatives. Hired in 2007 by Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman as Director of Corporate Social Responsibility, Shah has a role previously only seen in European law firms. While partly serving as marketing to attract goodwill and clients, the addition of committees aimed solely at public service at many private firms is a chance to better organize their growing role in such work. There is, of course, another element, in that firms are meeting the demands of clients who want to know that they are working with socially responsible firms they cab be “proud of.” Still, it shows the increasing importance of such social programs and their impact on the private legal sector.
December 3rd, 2007
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In its continuing series about inmates exonerated by DNA evidence, The New York Times profiles Jeffrey Mark Deskovic. Convicted at age 17 of the murder and rape of a high school classmate in New York, he was released in 2006, his conviction overturned. Now 34, he is struggling after prison, trying to put his life back together and doing what he can to stay afloat. He is on a scholarship at Mercy College in Dobbs Ferry, NY, earning a degree in behavioral sciences and studying for the Law School Admissions Test. He has bought his first car and paid rent for his first apartment. And while he relishes such little things which he has been denied for over half his life, he realizes how far behind he is.
“Sometimes,” Mr. Deskovic said one morning in his dorm room, “I feel that the only difference from here to prison is that I don’t have bars on my windows.” He was kneeling on his bed and staring at the neat lawn outside. “I’m free, but I’m trapped, and no matter how much I run, I’ll never make up for the lost time.”
He has also struggled to reconnect with his brother and mother. Being her sons only link to the outside world for 15 years, a tension has built up between Mr. Deskovic and his mother. More importantly, though, Mr. Deskovic is focused on social justice, earning much of the money he lives on by speaking about his experiences at colleges and organizations across the state. These engagements provide him with much-needed cash, but they are also ways to conquer his social immaturity, being stunted during his time in prison. They are furthermore a medium to understand what has happened to him and perhaps prevent it from happening to others. Speaking before the League of Women Voters, he opens with a prayer and concludes by asking the women to get involved, “Can you make a phone call? Can you join a demonstration?” To read more about his experiences, please click here.
December 3rd, 2007
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In a recent series of articles, The New York Times takes an in-depth look at 115 former inmates across the country, most of whom were wrongly imprisoned on murder or rape charges. Utilizing the extensive records of the Innocence Project, the Times researched these men and their lives on the outside. Every one of them was exonerated by DNA evidence and many came into the prison system as teens, leaving as adults. Nearly 40% of those men interviewed have received no government assistance or compensation, men like Michael Anthony Williams and Gene Bibbins who have found life after prison full of difficulties.
“It’s ridiculous,” said Vincent Moto, exonerated in 1996 of a rape conviction after serving almost nine years in Pennsylvania. “They have programs for drug dealers who get out of prison. They have programs for people who really do commit crimes. People get out and go in halfway houses and have all kinds of support. There are housing programs for them, job placement for them. But for the innocent, they have nothing.”
Some sue the state or their former correctional institution, trying to receive some measure of recompense for time served unfairly. Still, many try to move on, getting jobs and careers, and in rarer cases, getting married or graduating from college, but the stigma of conviction is hard to throw off, particularly with potential employers. Personal relationships that haven’t existed for as many as 15 years are difficult to reestablish, and in the case of those who were convicted at a particularly young age, merging back into ordinary life is a constant struggle. These men are finding out how to pay their bills, do their groceries or connect with the opposite sex for the very first time without the structure of prison telling them what to do. While new federal regulations have attempted to increase compensation at the national level, state laws have been slow to follow. And for many of those who have lapsed into drugs and criminal activity, such help may be too little too late. To read more, please click here.
December 3rd, 2007
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