Why I Attended Law School

The stories I read in Doing Ourselves Justice: (Re) Committing to a Life of the Law, seem to depict individuals that went to law school to help other people or to solve some type of injustice. However, my journey is personal and quite different. My path to law school began when I was twelve years old growing up in the city of Detroit. I remember when I was at church a lady asked me, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I stated, a lawyer. I do not know why I said that I wanted to become a lawyer. After all, what does a twelve year old know about being a lawyer, especially when never exposed to the field.

I grew up in a community where there was a lot of serious crime. This had something to do with me wanting to be a lawyer. In addition to my environment, the circumstances that I grew up in influenced my decision to attend law school. I grew up disadvantaged and deprived. My father gambled and was an alcoholic. My mother stayed at home for the majority of my childhood. Sometimes she worked in the candle shop of the church we attended, making very little. There was very little money in the home.

Many of the basic necessities to live were not provided. I lived in the dark and cold. On many occasions, our lights and gas was disconnected. We lived in a two family flat. The neighbor down stairs allowed us to run an extension cord out her window up to our unit to have electricity for heaters. The landlord eventually found out and made us disconnect that mechanism because it was a fire hazard. In addition, the house had centipedes and mice.