I did it for the story. Whatever it was.
Two Harvard degrees, a Rhodes scholarship, three years working as a newspaper reporter, 10 years as a trial lawyer and Assistant U.S. Attorney, 14 years writing and producing television shows like The Blacklist, Life, Boston Legal, The Practice, as well as three short-lived network shows I created and then ran into the ground on my own.
I’ve received Peabody and Emmy awards and nominations, taught for seven years as an adjunct law professor, mostly at USC’s Gould’s School of Law, and served as the Chairman of the California State Commission on Government Efficiency and Economy, which sounds like a joke but isn’t.
I’ve defended political asylum seekers pro bono and created the Public Counsel Emergency Fund for Torture Victims but mostly I work of counsel as a trial lawyer at the firm of Kirkland & Ellis.
According to newspaper accounts, I’ve been a “willowy southpaw” amateur boxer with “no taste for the job” and the loser of the 1990 Berkeley Law School Honor’s Moot Court Final.
An unreliable but sincere friend, a devoted but impatient husband and father, an enthusiastic but untalented drinker, I have the anger management skills of Donald Duck and the side profile of Cyrano de Bergerac. If I am guilty of the “humble brag,” it is only because I have so much to be humble about .
“You have no idea what a poor opinion I have of myself,” W.S. Gilbert wrote, “or how little I deserve it.”
I believe that the only point of doing anything is to gain material which can then be turned into a story.
I believe that the art of storytelling is the liveliest, most human of all the arts, and the most important one.
Anyway, that’s my story and I’m sticking with it.
What Now?