The Upside of (Not) Winning the Lottery
February 20, 2020

    I'm a junkie for the upside of a learning curve.

    When I was in college, and for a while afterward, if I got that question, "What would you do if you won the lottery?" I knew my answer.  I'd stay in school.  I'd become a sort of academic Peter Pan, earning serial bachelor's or master's degrees – not for any particular purpose, no long-term plan to become a professor or to ever use my garland of degrees for anything.  Just for the pure, unadulterated joy of learning.

    You see, I'm a junkie for the upside of a learning curve.  (Did I also mention I'm a nerd and a bookworm?)
      
    So fast forward 15 or 20 years, and my answer to the what-would-you-do-if-you-won-the-lottery question is a little different now – though perhaps no less bizarre: I would go into full-time farming, and I'd start an organization to launch a new generation of innovative, earth-conscious farmers.  That too would make for a lifetime riding the upside of a learning curve.  But that's another story, for another day.

    For today, the story is about how I got my old lottery wish, but by slightly different means, and with arguably better results.  You see, I had already won a lottery – the genetic lottery, by which I had a few spare IQ points lying around.  (That's not bragging because I didn't earn those IQ points; you can't brag about what you didn't earn.)  And I found out that my lack of spare cash to fund a life as a perpetual university student need not put a damper on my love of learning.  I learned, in fact, that someone, lots of someones, would actually pay me to learn stuff for them, and – bonus! – what I learned made a practical difference in the world.  It's debatable whether that practical difference was/is always positive, but it no doubt makes a difference.

    You see, that's an attorney's job: first you learn a bunch of basic rules and principles in law school, plus how to use various research tools to learn all the rules and principles that you didn't learn in law school (or that you forgot by the time you need them – which is most of them).  Then, when you get out into practice and you have a client, you learn as much as you can about the client's circumstances – which often involves learning a great deal about the client's business or industry and the broader social and economic factors and forces that shape or constrain the client's circumstances.  Then, you have to use the rules and principles of law that you've learned and researched to figure out how to help the client solve whatever problem they're facing – or at least as much of that problem as can be solved through the machinery of the law (which is usually not all of the problem).  

    Each case thus becomes like a complete college course.  Do a few cases of a similar type, and all of a sudden you're building the kind of expertise that is supposed to be captured in a college "major".  Practice in a variety of areas, and it's like a broad degree program – or several at once.  Who knew, back when I was pining to stay in the womb of academia, that I would get to learn loads about healthcare and insurance, when hospitals and insurance companies became my core clients at the law firm in Oklahoma City?  I had no way of anticipating, back then, that I would someday become fascinated (and somewhat disturbed) by real estate title,  pipeline contruction, eminent domain, and bank lending regulations, by doing work for oil and gas companies and banks foreclosing mortgages.  I didn't realize the deep dive I would get to take into the history of Native American tribes in this country, particularly the history that led to the passage of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988, when I started helping tribes protect their revenue sources, improve their social services, and promote policies of cultural reclamation.  And I had no idea what a privilege it would be to help my community advance by reviewing contracts for the City Council, and to walk families in my area through the legal and financial issues associated with planning for death or dealing with the death of a loved one.

    What I didn't know then, but understand pretty intimately now, is that practicing law is basically the poor man's (or middle-class girl's) ticket to staying in school forever, to riding the upside of that learning curve for the rest of my days, to feeding an addiction to learning.  Lucky me.