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I begin by congratulating the staff and faculty advisers of the UMKC Law Review. The idea of an internet publication is one whose time has come. Those associated with creating this first edition are commended for their prescience in seeing the future and rushing to greet it. I am pleased to be associated with visionaries.

My assigned topic could be called equanimity and the lawyer. I understand my assignment to be one of recounting personal experiences to the extent those experiences may help others find gratification and happiness in the practice of law. I embrace the opportunity for I have enjoyed a long and rewarding courtship with that jealous mistress.

The flirtation began in 1967. As a fourth-year student at the University of Missouri at Columbia I began to realize that my Bachelor of Arts Degree provided me no marketable skills. My studies centered primarily on history and English. In terms of career preparation, I might as well have remained in the bumper pit at the Leeds Chevrolet factory in Kansas City, Missouri, the last job I held before driving off to Columbia, Missouri in 1964.

As poor as those focus areas were as job qualifiers they were an excellent … Read the full text …